When provenance equals dominance
The growth of geographical indication labels in Hunan province is boosting the quality and sales of local agricultural produce and helping raise workers’ incomes across several sectors, according to officials, industry insiders and farmers.
A geographical indication is a label displayed on products to show they have a specific place of origin and are imbued with qualities or a reputation determined by that location’s prevalent environmental or cultural factors.
As such, GIs are a form of intellectual property right and are widely used to protect products from being misrepresented.
Once a GI label is granted it can play a significant role in boosting the development of a specific sector and the local economy, said Gu Wei, an official with the National Intellectual Property Administration, who is currently serving as a deputy director of Sangzhi county, Hunan, to aid poverty alleviation efforts.
Gu and his colleagues are working to help more of the county’s products, including black pigs and reed leaves used as wrapping for zongzi, a type of glutinous rice ball, to gain GI status.
Hunan already has several successful examples of GI products, such as Junshan crawfish from Junshan district, Yueyang city.
After being assigned GI status in March, the formerly little-known crawfish now has its own ID card that has helped win greater customer recognition, raising the price by 5%, said Zhou Yongjun, director of the Junshan Administration of Market Regulation.
Zhou said the local crawfish association, processors and breeders joined to form a complete industry chain.
“While the farmers focus on breeding crawfish, the industry association is responsible for organizing experts to provide lectures for them on policies, technologies, production standards, along with brand building and coordination. Companies buy crawfish from breeders via orders, process them and then sell them,” he said.
A breeding base covering almost 11,860 acres has been established in Junshan, and the 13 crawfish businesses in it have a daily trading volume of 580 tons.
In Junshan, 201 of the 2,102 households classified as impoverished have been lifted out of poverty since members started working in the sector, Zhou said.
The story is similar for Yanling yellow peaches, grown in Yanling county, Zhuzhou city, which were granted a national GI label in 2016.
Tan Zhongcheng, secretarygeneral of the Yanling Yellow Peach Industry Association, said the label means such fruit can only be labeled as a “Yanling yellow peach” if certain requirements are fulfilled, such as being grown at 985 to 3,280 feet above sea level in Yanling and meeting specific quality standards.
Yanling yellow peaches are exposed to fewer chemical fertilizers than similar fruit grown by individual farmers without unified standards.
They are also picked at a time that allows them to become fully ripe by the time they reach shops so they taste sweet, and they are wrapped in better packaging, Tan said.
“That means they are wellreceived in the market, with 200 tons being exported to countries such as Singapore and Vietnam every year.”
Tan said 8,256 families are involved in Yanling’s yellow peach industry, which produces 51,000 tons of the fruit every year. The industry has lifted more than 4,700 families out of poverty, with each earning an average of 8,800 yuan ($1,300) a year.