Recommendations for Promoting High Quality Development of Sericulture Industry in Dongtai City

Changqing WANG*, Jun CHENG, Bin YANG2, Yun HONG

1. Office of Dongtai Municipal People’s Government, Dongtai 224200, China; 2. Dongtai City Sericulture Technical Guidance and Management Center, Dongtai 224200, China

Abstract With many years of benign development, Dongtai City has established a complete technical system for the sericulture industry, an advanced industrialized operation mode, a mature operation mechanism of trade, industry and agriculture, and a perfect social service mode. The production level of sericulture in Dongtai City is constantly improved. However, there are still problems such as small scale of individual household, slow technological progress, low level of industrial mechanization and labor saving, and hidden dangers in safe production of sericulture. It is recommended to fully build mulberry gardens and lay a solid foundation for the sericulture industry; implement compound operations to increase the level of income growth; deepen three major innovations, break through the bottlenecks; expand industrial functions, promote integrated development, and accelerate the high quality development of the sericulture industry in Dongtai City.

Key words Sericulture, High quality, Development, Dongtai City

1 Introduction

The sericulture industry is an industry with economic, social, ecological, and people-enriching benefits. It conforms to the national industrial policy and development direction. The high-quality development of the sericulture industry has excellent driving and promotion effects on the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy. Based on the investigation and analysis of the sericulture industry in Dongtai City, we came up with recommendations for the high-quality development of the sericulture industry in Dongtai.

2 Current situations and characteristics of sericulture industry in Dongtai City

Dongtai City is an important high-quality silk production base in China. The total scale, the silk benefit, and silk quality have been ranked first in Jiangsu Province and the top in China for more than ten years. It has been determined as the Silk Base of China, National Rural Science Popularization Demonstration Base of China, National Sericulture Standardization Demonstration Zone, and China High Quality Silk Production Base. "Xingyun" and "FUAN" trademarks haven been recognized as "China Famous Brands", "Dongtai Silkworm Cocoon" has become China’s geographical indication certification trademark, "Xingyun" brand dry cocoon has won the title of famous brand products of Jiangsu Province, and "FUAN" brand raw silk has won the title of "China Famous Brand Products".

2.1 Significant scale benefitsIn 2017, the total area of mulberry gardens in Dongtai City was 9 667 ha, with more than 320 000 silkworms and 135 000 t of cocoon, the income of silkworm farmers was nearly 900 million yuan, the average income per hectare was 127 500 yuan, the area of mulberry gardens, the amount of silkworms, silkworm cocoon production and raw silk production accounted for about 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% of Jiangsu Province, respectively. In the whole city, there are 18 professional sericulture cooperatives, five sericulture family farms, and more than 5 000 households with more than 500 kg of cocoon production.

2.2 Accurate socialized servicesDongtai City has innovated the "eight unification" socialized service model, realized the serialized service of pre-production, mid-production and post-production. The whole city has a uniform distribution of 98% for silkworms, 90% for silkworms, and 60% for mechanical disinfection. Besides, it has innovated "Internet+sericulture industry" information service model, established a database of "Canxintong" information platform to regularly publish information and technical measures, and carry out remote service guidance. In addition, it has innovated "one-stop" supermarket service model to provide packaged and nurse like services for silkworm farmers, and to realize comprehensive support of technologies, silk information, and materials.

2.3 Advanced industrialized modeDongtai City implements the industrialized operation mode of "company+cooperative (+factory)+farmer". The leading enterprises adopt a mechanism of collecting cocoon at protection price, two times distribution for promotion, and three times of preferential incentives to benefit the farmers and form close interest community with the farmers. In 2017, Jiangsu Fuan Cocoon & Silk Stock Limited Company and Jiangsu Minxingjian Silk Co., Ltd. promoted income of silkworm farmers about 4.8 million and 5.6 million yuan, respectively.

2.4 High quality of cocoon and silkDongtai City comprehensively adopts the new varieties and new technologies, and the quality of major commodities such as silkworm, cocoons and raw silk takes the leading position in the national industry and famous in the international market. 6A Grade raw silk accounts for 40% of the international market, and the price of their silk is 5% to 15% higher than competitors outside of Dongtai City. Jiangsu Fuan Cocoon & Silk Stock Limited Company has the pricing power of the international raw silk market, while Jiangsu Xincao Cocoon & Silk Co., Ltd. is the main supplier of Song Brocades for new Chinese dress for leaders of Beijing APEC Summit.

3 Condition analysis

With 20 years of benign development, Dongtai City has established a complete technical system, an advanced industrialized operation mode, a mature operation mechanism of trade, industry and agriculture, and a perfect social service mode for the sericulture industry. It can be said that the development of the sericulture industry in Dongtai City has a good foundation and external conditions.

3.1 Full support of industrial policiesThe sericulture industry is not only a traditional industry, but also an ecological industry that follows the laws of nature, and is a characteristic industry that can make people get rich and increase their income. In December 2017, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture jointly issued theNoticeoftheMinistryofCommerceonLaunchingaLarge-scaleIntensiveSericultureDemonstrationBaseandPromotingtheQualityandEfficiencyImprovementoftheSilkIndustry, clearly setting forth the overall requirements of rural revitalization strategy, to promote the large-scale intensive development of sericulture through the guidance of national industrial policies, public financial support, leading enterprises, and promote the development of targeted poverty alleviation and increase of farmers’ income through industrial development, accelerate the construction of large-scale intensive sericulture demonstration base, and actively cultivate new business entities, and to improve the level of sericulture production technology. Jiangsu Provincial Agricultural Committee takes the "fine sericulture" as the main direction of the development of Jiangsu sericulture industry. Yancheng City has released theKeyWorkofSericultureProductioninYanchengCityin2018, and included the mulberry garden extension work into the important content of assessment of the "One Forest" project. Dongtai City attaches great importance to the production of sericulture, and regards "one silk" as the "four-one" characteristic leading industry cultivation of agricultural transformation and upgrading, and clarifies the reward and subsidy measures. The subsidy for sericulture professional villages with more than 133.33 ha of new mulberry garden is up to 4 500 yuan/ha, and the subsidy is up to 67 500 yuan/ha for high-efficiency model households or the sericulture family farms with the new mulberry garden of more than 1.33 ha. The subsidy is allocated in the proportion of 1∶1∶1 of the city, town and leading enterprises, to greatly promote the development of sericulture industry in Dongtai City.

3.2 High demand for high-quality silk and cocoon marketIn the past two years, the silk market has been on the rise, and the current price of silk and cocoon has nearly increase one time compared with two years ago. According to the information analysis of the silk and cocoon trading market, the spot price has risen steadily in recent period, and the speed of the goods has increased. The continuous reduction of the cocoon production has made the domestic cocoon supply tight, and the supply gap of high-quality silk is increasing. Under the effect of rising factors, the high price of silk and cocoon may become a common phenomenon. The high-quality silk in Dongtai City is 20 000-30 000 yuan/t higher than that of other areas. The raw silk produced by Jiangsu Fuan Cocoon & Silk Stock Limited Company has reached 580 000 yuan/t, which has continuously refreshed the historical price of both the domestic and foreign markets. According to the current price of silk, the purchase price of cocoon in 2018 would increase by a large margin compared with that in 2017, making a new record again.

3.3 Favorable opportunity for expansion of mulberry gardenAccording to the investigation in the winter of last year, Tongxiang of Zhejiang Province, Sheyang of Yancheng City and Xuhe of Dongtai City also have many mulberry seedlings, which can meet the demand of Dongtai City. The sericulture technical departments and seedlings brokers in Fuan, Tangyang, Anfeng and other towns in Dongtai City organized to plant more than one million mulberry trees through various channels, and seized the favorable opportunity of mulberry seedlings and moderate price, and quickly organized the purchase of mulberry seedlings, expanded mulberry garden (more than 133.33 ha) from last winter to the current spring. In future, it would take further measures to expand the mulberry gardens.

At the same time, there are some unfavorable factors for the production and development of sericulture industry. (i) Small size of households and slow technological progress. At present, the production model still follows the way of individual mulberry garden and the whole process of labor, which is not compatible with the requirements of large-scale production of modern agriculture. The sericulture varieties in production are still approved in the 1980s and promoted in the 1990s. Most of the supporting technologies were before the 1990s, and technological innovation lags far behind. (ii) Low level of industrialized mechanization and low level of labor saving. In Dongtai City, silkworm farmers urgently need to add labor-saving and easy-to-operate machinery and equipment, reduce labor intensity and improve production efficiency. In addition, the labor aging phenomenon is prominent. Most of people engaged in the sericulture industry is elderly people over 60 years old. Young people are not willing to do sericulture. There are few people in the sericulture industry. Family farms and large professional households have a severe labor shortage of sericulture in the busy season. (iii) There are still hidden dangers in the safe production of sericulture. Especially, the problems of alternated planting of mulberry and crop and safe use of pesticide can not be ignored.

4 Recommendations

In the future, Dongtai City should implement the "three major innovations" of technology, model and service in accordance with the goal of "stabilizing the total production and improve quality and efficiency", aiming at large-scale and intensive production and operation, and mechanizing the management of mulberry gardens, taking the intelligent control of sericulture environment as the starting point. Based on the sericulture cooperatives, family farms and large professional households, it is recommended to promote the sericulture standardization production, industrialized operation, socialized service and efficient operation, and improve the comprehensive level of sericulture production, to make it rank first in the whole country, so as to build a national level sericulture and intensification demonstration base.

4.1 Energetically expanding the mulberry garden and building the foundation of sericulture industryIn the next 2-3 years, Dongtai City should seize the opportunity of a new round of development, adhere to policy guidance, expand the mulberry garden relying on mulberry planting, promote the development of sericulture specialty towns and sericulture specialty villages, and continuously upgrade large-scale and intensive production level, to forming a regional scale advantage. Dongtai City plans to build 666.66 ha of new mulberry gardens, and annually feed 360 000 silkworms, and annually produce 14 000 t of silkworm cocoons. All of them meet the requirements of 5A grade high quality raw silk, and the proportion of 6A grades reach 60%. Dongtai City plans to develop two high-quality sericulture demonstration bases, cultivating 60 large-scale sericulture large-scale and intensive demonstration villages, 100 sericulture family farms with more than 2 ha, and 600 large-scale households with 0.666 ha (annually producing 40 pieces of silkworms). The city’s mulberry income is over 150 000 yuan/ha.

4.2 Implementing compound operations to increase income levelDongtai City should attach great importance to the mulberry garden interplanting and increase efficiency, and promote the mulberry garden to interplant celery, amaranth, and fritillary to improve economic benefits. Besides, it is recommended to increase the comprehensive utilization of by-products, vigorously develop mulberry branches to develop edible fungi, silkworm pupa to cultivateCordycepssinensis, silkworm extract chlorophyll and other processing industries, to improve resource utilization and increase the added value of resource utilization. Dongtai City should pay close attention to the deep processing of terminal products, bring into full play to the advantages of excellent quality and market sales, strengthen cooperation with scientific research institutes, integrate the advantages of silk industry, develop downstream processing and new products, and enhance industry competitiveness, so as to promote increase of farmers’ income.

4.3 Deepening the three major innovations and breaking the bottleneck

4.3.1Innovating the production mode. It is recommended to establish and improve the standardization technology system for sericulture, comprehensively promote standardized production, promote the "24-day silkworm breeding method", and introduce advanced practical machinery and equipment such as mulberry garden management, cutting mulberry, pest control and disease prevention to reduce labor intensity and improve labor productivity, promote the balanced development of silkworm and cocoon production and quality.

4.3.2Innovating the service mode. It is recommended to improve the "eight unifications" socialized services, expand the "Internet+sericulture" information service, enrich the "one-stop" supermarket service mode, accelerate the promotion and application of new technologies, save costs and labor and increase benefits of silkworm farmers. Besides, it is recommended to strengthen the cultivation of new socialized service organizations, and provide new sericulture services for silkworm farmers such as mulberry unmanned machine control, mechanized disinfection of silkworm machines and tools, small silkworm factory co-cultivation, as well as the labor shortage adjustment. In addition, Dongtai City should attach great importance to cultivating the sericulture labor adjustment broker, strengthen the supply and demand connection, and introduce surplus labor in a timely manner to solve the bottleneck problems such as aging and labor shortage in the current sericulture production.

4.3.3Innovating the operation mode. Dongtai City should adhere to a moderate scale operation and stabilize the silkworm breeding team. Specifically, it is recommended to guide the silkworm breeding experts and large household circulation takeover that are intended to expand the scale of mulberry gardens, build sericulture family farms, and attract entrepreneurs from outside to return home to set up sericulture family farms, continuously increase the operation scale to achieve the goal of annual income of large silkworm breeding households and family farms more than 100 000 yuan and 500 000 yuan, respectively.

4.4 Expanding industrial functions and promoting integrated developmentDongtai City should attach great importance to the integrated development of primary, secondary and tertiary industries of silk and cocoon. Specifically, taking the pilot project for "integrated development of primary, secondary and tertiary industries of rural silk and cocoon" in Fuan Town and construction of silk and cocoon characteristic towns as the opportunities, Dongtai City should deeply develop eco-leisure tour, silkworm experience tour, science education tour and other activities with sericulture industry and sericulture culture as the main activities, further upgrade the "National Popular Science Education Base" in Liangnan Village of Liangduo Town, develop sericulture ecotourism, leisure experience tourism, and silk industry tourism functions such as Tianrun Mulberry Picking Garden, Fuan Silk & Cocoon Industrial Park, to energetically develop silk and cocoon cultural tourism ecological industry in Dongtai City.