Rose-apple revolution
Huang Yifeng is well known as the Taiwanese rose apple king, someone whom visiting officials, whether from Taiwan or the Chinese mainland, almost always come to see when they tour Hainan Island. In 1999, back when most mainlanders didn’t even know what rose apples looked like, he planted the Taiwanese variety ‘Black Vajra’ in Wenchang in Hainan’s northeast. He discovered that Hainan-grown rose apples were the equal of Taiwan’s in both looks and taste.
When he established Jindefeng in Haikou in 2001, he had serious doubts about whether he should go all out in growing rose apples.
“The mainland market for rose apples back then was zero,” he recalls. “By planting exclusively rose apples, I felt I was either going to win big or lose big. I figured the odds were 50:50.”
Eventually, the success of ‘Black Vajra’ in conquering the market in Taiwan bolstered his confidence. “In one year 10,000 hectares—the equivalent of 150,000 mainland mu—were planted in Kaohsiung and Pingtung. If that much land under cultivation still couldn’t meet the demand of 23 million Taiwanese, how would my rose apples grown on 1000-some mu not find buyers among 1.3 billion mainland Chinese?”
With that positive outlook, Huang pressed ahead with planting rose-apple trees. His rose-apple orchards only harvested 300,000 catties in 2003, but by 2007, the harvest jumped to 20,000 catties per day. With a wholesale price of RMB15 per catty, daily revenues had reached RMB300,000.
Jindefeng was also the first Taiwanese firm to open a stall at Nanbei Wholesale Fruit Market, Haikou’s largest. “We adopted the strategy of gaining a foothold in satellite cities before attacking the big metropolis,” explains Huang. “From that small fruit stand in Haikou, we sold rose apples to various mainland cities.”
But a few years after ‘Black Vajra’ had conquered the inland winter fruit market, Huang discovered that demand started to weaken.
“Rose apples don’t store well, and shipping took too long,” he says. “By the time consumers got ahold of them, some had already started going bad.” That was the conclusion he came to after he researched the supply chain.
In Taiwan, rose apples are picked in southern fields one day, and brought to wholesale markets the following morning, reaching consumers later in the day. But it takes at least seven days for Hainan rose apples to get into the hands of Shanghai consumers.
Consequently, the bold and decisive Huang, who is about to take over as president of the Taiwan Businessmen Association, Hainan, is preparing to press for improvements on both the production and marketing fronts. The first step is to replace ‘Black Vajra’ with the variety ‘Jambu Madu Red’ from Indonesia, which is cold hardier. The second step will be to establish a fruit shipping company, which will consolidate shipping for all rose apple producers in Hainan and organize harvesting periods for corporate producers, large family farms and small family farms alike, so as to prevent too much fruit from being harvested at the same time.
Huang’s Jindefeng orchard in Haikou’s Yunlong is the largest producer of rose apples in all of Hainan.
“The new variety has Black Vajra’s mouthfeel yet better cold hardiness,” says Huang. “The only flaw is that the leaves are bigger, so that its wind resistance is inferior.” The introduction of ‘Jambu Madu Red’ represents the start of a second rose-apple revolution in Hainan.
In fact, the first person mentioned when talking about who sparked the revolution in Hainan fruits is none other than Hong Zhaoming, who is called the “mango godfather” by local media and has five orchards outside of Sanya that total 4000 mu (270 ha).
Taiwanese agribusiness brought techniques that revolutionized fruit growing on Hainan Island. The photo above shows Taiwanese farmer Huang Yifeng displaying ‘Black Vajra,’ a variety of rose apple introduced from Taiwan. The inset photo shows ‘Jambu Madu Red,’ a large-leaved variety introduced from Indonesia.