Have you ever been hungry?

In real life

"Hunger" never went far

May 18th

This was stated by UN Secretary-General António Guterres

"Global hunger is at a record high"

In just two years

The number of people who are severely food insecure

From 135 million before the pandemic

has increased to 276 million today

I can't help but think

Where does the food in our cities go?

01 What are the difficulties in ensuring people's livelihood and supply in a city?

There will be many answers to this question, but three are particularly critical:

1. "Arable land" has become a scarce resource in a city

Over the past 40 years or so, the process of reform, opening up, and industrialization has prompted some of China's large and extra-large cities to "inch every inch of land and every inch of land." With the rise of high-rise buildings, agricultural land is becoming less and less.

Shenzhen, for example, has a land area of more than 1,997 square kilometers, but only 54,300 mu of arable land is used for agricultural production (Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources, Bureau of Statistics, 2019). Therefore, more than 95% of the fresh agricultural products needed by Shenzhen's 17.56 million people have to be imported from other provinces and cities, and this situation is also very special in the country.

In fact, most of the coastal cities in the eastern part of our country are grain-importing cities, which will bring about a result, "the more developed the urban economy, the weaker the agricultural industry." Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou are all like this, and their daily necessities such as rice, flour, grain, oil, poultry, eggs, meat, and milk all need to be transported in large quantities from other provinces and cities.

2. China's agricultural production resources are "concentrated and scattered"

"Centralized and decentralized" sounds like a sick sentence, but in fact, it just reflects the distribution characteristics of China's productive agricultural resources.

"Concentration" means that China's productive agricultural resources are mainly concentrated in the central and western regions and the north, while China's eastern China, especially the southeast region, is relatively scarce, but there are nearly 600 million relatively wealthy people living here, and the pressure on grain supply is greater.

"Dispersion" refers to the fact that China is still dominated by a small-scale peasant economy on the whole, intensive and standardized modern agriculture is still in the early stage of development, most of the cultivated land is scattered in the hands of individual farmers, and there are relatively few large-scale production bases or farms concentrated in contiguous areas, and the layout is scattered.

The status quo of "centralization and decentralization" is destined to require enterprises to have stronger supply chain capabilities.

3. The "geographical location" of end customers is unevenly distributed

Where the customer is, where our business is, we need to deliver to it. The message here is that our business will be highly correlated with the population density of a city, which in turn will be highly correlated with the industrial layout of the city.

The main urban area of a city is often the most mature and well-equipped area, such as schools, hospitals and large enterprises are basically located in the main urban area, so the population is also the most dense. This brings a problem to our distribution industry, that is, the demand for food ingredients in the main urban area is strong and frequent, and we need to mobilize more people and vehicles, transfer more goods, design more routes and solve more emergency problems in the main urban area, which puts forward higher requirements for the supply chain capacity of enterprises.

The relatively remote suburbs are often sparsely populated and do not need traffic jams, but enterprises need to solve the problems of high cost and low efficiency caused by small orders and dispersion.

Even if it is not completely blocked, long-distance transportation across provinces and cities will add more costs and uncertainties to the transportation of fresh products, and the supply of ingredients in a city is destined to require a strong supply chain system to ensure it.

02 What kind of supply guarantee system does a city need?

Wuhan has been locked down for 76 days, while Shanghai has been under lockdown for nearly two months. Cities under lockdown have exposed a lot of supply security problems, and through experience summary, we believe that a city's supply guarantee system needs to have three "strong".
1. It is necessary to have strong supply production and organization capabilities
If a city does not have enough arable land, from the perspective of ensuring people's livelihood and supply, there will be two solutions: one is to build "enclaves" in other provinces and cities, just as Shanghai has hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land in Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, which can carry out targeted production, and the other is to establish strategic partnerships with large state-owned enterprises or private enterprises that have abundant resources to give full play to their advantages and make up for the shortcomings of ensuring supply. Obviously, it will be more difficult to create "enclaves" in cities where every inch of land is at a premium, so it will be more practical and effective to cooperate with enterprises through marketization.

2. It is necessary to have a strong food supply chain system
Many people confuse vehicle transportation with supply chains, thinking that with vehicles there is a supply chain, which is actually biased. Vehicles are only necessary equipment in the supply chain system, but also need professional training and management, scientific distribution and deployment, which will involve the whole chain management of customers, goods, personnel, vehicles, routes, delivery, etc., as well as information support and data application and other aspects of work. All of this requires a well-developed and robust supply chain system, which is not built overnight.

3. It is necessary to have strong food safety assurance capabilities
For people's biological resources, we need a stable and abundant supply, and it must be a healthy and safe supply. Ensuring the safety of food ingredients is always the top priority for distribution companies. It is necessary to have the ability to ensure the safety of food ingredients at the source, have the ability to quarantine and test the whole chain, and at the same time be able to make the government, customers and consumers visible and trustworthy through information technology.

It is difficult for the city itself to guarantee the whole industrial chain, but it can carry out refined management through powerful enterprises, carry out high-quality quarantine testing with the help of qualified enterprises, and build a public traceability chain for the quality and safety of agricultural products with the help of enterprises with strong scientific and technological strength.

03 Polyester Group is committed to the construction of urban supply guarantee system

Dijiu Group has established strategic partnerships across the country, and has abundant resources and deep experience in people's livelihood and food safety.

We have such a source. Many well-known domestic enterprises such as Beidahuang, COFCO, Arowana, Shenzhou Fertile Grain, Congyu Group, Saijunwang, Xinli International Trade City and other well-known domestic enterprises have long-term strategic cooperative relations.

We have the ability to do so. Solid food safety protection capabilities, efficient distribution capabilities, advanced digital capabilities and high-quality service capabilities.

We have such feelings. We do our best to provide safe, healthy and green agricultural products for citizens and enterprises, and are committed to being an enterprise that is trusted by consumers and respected by society.