A Day in the Suburbs of Qingdao

After a long train ride in the rain and the scariest 2 hour taxi ride ever, I made it to Qingdao; a city between Beijing and Shanghai on the coast.  Today is an exciting day, I am touring with Mr. Li an associate of East Rock Technologies who will show me more mid-sized farms.  I am lucky that he has found a relative to travel with us for the day and serve as a translator.  We started the day with tea and a visit to the outdoor market.  This was the first market I have visited in Asia that had beef for sale, an entire leg of beef hanging just like the pork has at other places I have been to.  We had the opportunity to pick up a few things from the seafood market which was intended for dinner later today.  

Over the course of the day we visited a vegetable farm, three dairy farms and a Wagyu beef finishing barn.  Through the assistance of my fantastic translator I was able to talk to these producers about export markets, importing livestock, the challenges they face in finding labour and their operations in general.  I was impressed at how advanced and efficient their operations really were.  Two farms in particular really impressed me, the first one we visited was a Nestle Demonstration Farm that had both dairy and Wagyu production.  The entire farm was set up as a tourist attraction almost with an enclosed viewing platform in the beef barn and a restaurant and store on site.  A feed company was hosting a field day there the same day and we joined them for part of the meeting and for lunch.  The Wagyu animals are finished for 26 months which helps give the beef its particular flavour.  Their market is very high end and a large portion of the product is exported to Japan.  They also sell their beef fresh at their on-farm store.  

With Mr. Li at the Nestle Demonstration Farm outside their retail store.

The Wagyu Finishing Barn

The second farm was that of my host, Mr. Li.  He milks approximately 200 cows in a double 8 DeLaval parlour.  The hay was again imported from the United States and it was specifically for the higher quality in this instance.  The cows were housed in a free stall system that wasn’t a barn, just a pen with a roof over the stalls. Being a coastal area, winters are mild and snow is not very common.  Production is around 26 litres per cow per day, not to bad for a country where 10 years ago their commercial agriculture industry was almost non existent and their land is all managed on 70 year leases from the government.  

All the farms used RFID tags for animal identification and to keep individual records.  In a country that has disease issues including Foot and Mouth Disease and food safety issues and strange rules surrounding agriculture, it was refreshing to see the farmers themselves so akin to what is done elsewhere in the world.  

I had the opportunity to spend most of the afternoon with Mr. Li’s entire family, his daughter (who took the day off school to tour with us), his niece (my translator) and his mother (who had never seen a foreigner in real life before).  We drank tea, talked about the history of China and Canada, cultures and agriculture.  For dinner I was treated to a seafood spread prepared by the family.  The entire day I felt like a celebrity, everyone wanted photos taken of me at their farm and I was even interviewed for a Chinese news broadcast, which was a complex process of translation and practice runs . It was a fantastic day and a highlight of the trip, I learned so much about how the industry has evolved in recent history and I can only imagine how much it will continue to grow in the future.