“Be grateful that we feed you”
A Chinese worker in one of the greenhouses where vegetables are grown. Photo: Alexander Kondratyuk/TASS
A Chinese vegetable grower told Russian Planet how they grow greenhouse vegetables near Krasnoyarsk
To interview one of the Chinese vegetable growers working in greenhouses in the Berezovsky district Krasnoyarsk Territory, the RP correspondent had to work hard. Find a friend who has lived in China for several years and knows Chinese well. Stock up on expensive cigarettes. Disguise the recorder. Arrive at a greenhouse town and buy a decent batch of tomatoes and cucumbers in a makeshift shop. Only after this did one of the workers, a former construction worker from Qinghai province, agree to step aside to smoke and talk. And after talking, he began to answer questions.
- Tell me, why does your cabbage ripen in a month and a half, and in the dachas next door in no less than three?
Because Russians grow completely different vegetables. We never use local seeds, we import everything from China. They are much better than yours. Our agronomists are doing very serious work. They create varieties so that vegetables produce big harvest and grew quickly. You have a lot of land, you can plant a lot of cabbage and wait a long time for it to grow. We have little land, but many people. Therefore, in China they are trying to develop varieties that ripen in weeks, so that new vegetables can be planted in the vacant space.
Mr. Jan (that’s what RP’s interlocutor calls the owner of the greenhouses where he works. - RP) said that when he first started working in Russia, he tried to plant Russian seeds, thinking that they were better suited to your climate. But these vegetables grew poorly, they were constantly sick, and the harvest was very small. After that, he switched to Chinese, and everything worked out.
Now the Russians have begun to understand how good our seeds are. The man from whom Mr. Dzhan buys the seeds says that now many Russians come to him and ask him to sell them. He's selling because they'll have to buy them again next year anyway. All our vegetables are hybrid. If you collect seeds from ripe cucumbers or tomatoes yourself, they still won’t produce good offspring. The harvest will be much smaller. Therefore, it is better to buy expensive seeds bred and collected by Chinese agronomists and not to save.
- Please advise how to care for vegetables so that they grow faster and produce a large harvest?
First, you need to fertilize the soil very well so that there is enough for the seeds. As soon as the sprouts appear, you need to monitor them all the time: treat them against diseases, pests, and destroy weeds. Be sure to feed the plants well to keep them strong. You rich land, fertilizers can be given less than in China, but they are still needed. Once a week we spray the sprouts with fertilizer, which we also import from China. It was created by our agronomists specifically for industrial cultivation in greenhouses in cold climates. As soon as you start using it, everything grows quickly and well. We also add substances that plants need to the soil - they help increase the yield.
- What kind of substances are these? What do they contain?
I do not know exactly. Let's look at the packaging ( brings a small bag with some grains inside). This is top dressing for tomatoes. Here's how to use it. You need to sprinkle a few peas under each bush once a week. The composition is written here: superphosphate, urea, and some other unfamiliar names. I do not know them. But I know that it is very good feeding, you start pouring it in, and the result is immediately visible. Chinese agronomists are the best in the world, they know everything about vegetables, they have studied everything. We have the most advanced science, new discoveries are made every day.
We also use Russian fertilizers because they are cheaper, but they do not give the same result. You definitely need to buy our Chinese fertilizers and give them to your vegetables.
- What Russian fertilizers do you use?
- This ammonium nitrate, concentrated nitrogen fertilizer. How do you use it?
Sprinkle it on the ground and then water it until it is absorbed.
Saltpeter, packaged in bags. Photo: Nikolay Titov/Fotoimedia/TASS
- How often?
Once a week. One bag is enough for one greenhouse.
- Do you fertilize all your vegetables this way?
All. What is it?
Ammonium nitrate should absolutely not be used to feed cucumbers: they will contain a lot of nitrates, they will become hazardous to health...
As Mr. Jan tells us, that’s what we do. If this is a bad fertilizer, why are you releasing it? It wasn’t made in China, but in Russia, right? We are offended when they say that we use harmful fertilizers. It is not true. Maybe your Russian fertilizers are bad, but ours, Chinese ones, are all good.
Tell me, if you don’t like the vegetables we grow, why do you buy them? Why are you taking it out in truckloads? If you don’t like it, eat the ones you grew yourself. If our tomatoes and cucumbers are dangerous to health, then why do you pass them off as your own - Russians? My friend and I once went to the market specifically to see what vegetables they sold there. All of ours are there, but we recognize them - we raised them ourselves. Only the price is ten times higher. And in the stores it’s the same - all the cucumbers and tomatoes are ours. Mr. Dzhan says that Russian traders then claim that they did not buy the vegetables from us, but that they grew them themselves or brought them from Europe. And the price is raised to the skies. And during the season they buy from us for ridiculous money. We recently sold a whole truckload of tomatoes for only 5 rubles per kilogram, just to cover the cost of the boxes. And your merchants then ask for them 10 times more, I saw it myself.
Some traders specifically ask us to grow huge tomatoes. They then pass them off as your most famous tomatoes from the south of the Krasnoyarsk Territory... I forgot what they are called...
- Minusinsk?
Exactly! They say they are considered the most delicious here. If our tomatoes were bad, they could not be passed off as the best. And the merchants give it out, and no one complains, everyone likes it.
- Do you like the vegetables you grow?
Of course, they are not as tasty as in China. How else? There is little sun here, little warmth. We have to build greenhouses and light stoves so that the plants don’t freeze. Feed them with fertilizers so that they have time to grow and produce a harvest. And for vegetables to gain flavor, they must ripen for a long time, under the sun. Therefore, we grow all our vegetables in a separate greenhouse. We don’t feed them anything so as not to rush them. It tastes better this way. And we plant other varieties for ourselves - those that we are used to at home. They yield less, but we like them better.
- Why not grow all vegetables in all greenhouses without fertilizing and fertilizers?
It will take a very long time and it will be unprofitable. If you wait for vegetables to ripen without using fertilizers created specifically for industrial growing, they will turn out to be very expensive. Then they will cost not 5, but 50 rubles per kilogram. And to work in Russia, the business must be very profitable. After all, here you not only have to pay for land and work, but also give a lot of money to officials. Mr. Jan said that he pays so that we are not caught and sent back to our homeland, so that we are not accused of growing bad vegetables, so that our greenhouses are not bulldozed - this has already been done. He pays all the time and is still afraid all the time. In Russia, the Chinese are treated very poorly; they create problems all the time.
A Chinese worker in one of the greenhouses where vegetables are grown. Photo: Alexander Kondratyuk/TASS
- What about the locals? Don't create problems?
We rarely communicate with them, only when we suddenly need to buy something urgently. They don’t like us either, and very often behave impolitely. Many are offended that we occupied their land. But who is to blame for this? They themselves. Have you been to China - have you seen how much land we have lying idle? Not at all. Everything is busy, everything is being processed, there is not a free meter. Nobody will take our land, because it is all used. And in Russia, huge fields are empty. If you don't need them, why not give them to those who want and know how to work? Who is to blame that the Russians don’t want to work, but we do? That they don’t know how to grow vegetables well, but we can? It would be better if they came and asked us to teach what and how to do, and not be angry with us. We could teach a lot and share knowledge.
- What kind, for example?
Yes, at least what kind of film for greenhouses is needed to grow three or four crops per season in a cold climate. Our scientists have created very good material, it doesn't tear, it just stretches. Lets in a lot of light: even when it’s twilight, it’s as bright inside as during the day. Keeps warm well. In Russia they don’t know how to make such film; they have to import it from China. If the Russians learned to produce it, it would be beneficial for everyone. But your officials, instead of sending capable people to learn from Chinese experience, prefer to say that our film is harmful. You have to bury it in the ground when the working season ends so that no one notices anything, otherwise they will find it and say that it is dangerous because they do not understand what it is made of.
Honestly, I think that they make up so many bad things about us because they don’t understand how we get such good harvest. That’s why they come up with the idea that we use harmful fertilizers. But our secret is extremely simple - you need to work hard. Get up early in the morning and work until sunset, don’t straighten your back all day. We water the soil with our sweat. Russians don’t know how to work that much and don’t want to. They either have lunch or... what do you mean by idleness? I remembered: a smoke break. They also drink a lot. That's why they invent all kinds of nonsense about us. This makes it easier to explain why ours is growing and theirs is not. We harvest 100 kg of vegetables from one meter per season, and they collect 10. So judge for yourself who can work and who can’t. We have only one worker working on one greenhouse, but at least ten Russian workers would be needed.
The ruble will become even cheaper, it will become completely unprofitable to do business in Russia, and we will leave. Probably, only after this our work will be appreciated, when there is no one to grow vegetables and the shops are empty. Russians cannot feed themselves. So it’s better to say thank you that we’re feeding you for now.
- If it’s not a secret, how much do you earn per month now?
Very little. I come to Russia to work for the third year in a row. The first time we received a decent amount, enough to renovate the house. The second time I earned less, but still twice as much as I earned in China. I don’t even know how many will be released this year. The ruble is getting cheaper all the time. I'm afraid I'll be left with almost nothing. If so, then I won’t come next year. Of course, if I can find a job at home, otherwise I may have no choice and will have to return here.
You understand that the Chinese do not go to work in Russia because they have a good life? Life is very difficult for us here. You work 16 hours a day, and there’s not even a place to wash properly. Mr. Can says he would like to build for visiting workers good house with all the amenities, but there is no point. It is unknown when your authorities will want to bulldoze everything and drive us off the ground. We have to huddle in temporary shelters. Every year they are forced to build greenhouses in a new location and start everything over again.
I had a chance to visit the place where the Chinese greenhouses stood last year. There's still nothing growing there—grass is barely growing through. Why do you think?
Because we cleared the land very well of all weeds, we weren’t lazy. The compounds that our scientists create help get rid of all harmful plants Once and for all. But don't worry: useful plants they don't work. This is how they are specially created. If you start growing, for example, tomatoes on the ground from under our greenhouses, they will grow beautifully and produce excellent harvest. And there will be nothing harmful in them. Many locals accuse us of ruining their land. But this is not so, we are only improving it. There is no need to be afraid of what you do not understand.
Aftertaste
A smiling and talkative worker gladly sold glossy, shiny tomatoes and small, elastic, dark green cucumbers with pimples to the RP correspondent. To verify his words that all vegetables grown in Chinese greenhouses are absolutely safe for health, we submitted them for analysis to an independent laboratory, Biochemical Research Center LLC.
In addition, benzopyrene was found in cucumbers, which should not be there at all. This first class carcinogen destroys bones and liver and causes malignant tumors. Arsenic and fluorine were found in tomatoes - in quantities twice the maximum permissible concentration. These toxic substances destroy human protein.
Unknowns were also found chemical substances, the composition of which could not be determined in the laboratory. What impact can they have on human body, probably only the mysterious Chinese “agronomists” know.
The next Russian-Chinese forum opened in Yekaterinburg the other day: China is among the top priority international partners of the Sverdlovsk region. But for now the authorities are top level They are agreeing to open joint ventures; the Chinese are already developing our territories.
The land committee of the regional Rosselkhoznadzor finds it difficult to say how many hectares of Sverdlovsk land are currently under the control of the Chinese: the farms (and Chinese residents in the Urals are mainly engaged in agriculture and logging) are registered to local entrepreneurs. One thing can be said with certainty: Chinese greenhouses occupy at least 300 hectares in almost every district of the Sverdlovsk region. Chinese greenhouses are located in Krasnoufimsky, Beloyarsky, Polevsky, Achitsky, Nevyansk, Sysertsky, Baikalsky, Slobodo-Turinsky, Tugulymsky, Rezhevsky districts of the region.
Employees of Rosselkhoznadzor organize demonstration raids every year. In 2014, the site wrote about such an event in the village of Ayatskoye: under a completely Russian name, the Chinese worked at Selyane LLC, growing vegetables in 15 greenhouses of 1000 square meters each. m.
In 2016, greenhouses near Rezh were checked: there, in the village of Ostanino, they have been growing and expanding for several years.
The Chinese grow everything on the Ural lands - from cucumbers to watermelons. Several harvests are harvested per year. At the same time, they use familiar technologies - Chinese ones. And what kind of technologies these are can be understood by this fact: in China today, about 40% of arable land has already been withdrawn from agricultural use - fertilizers and pesticides used to increase productivity are killing the land.
Having “worked” one piece of land, the Chinese move on to the next. What remains in the same place can be found out from the land supervision reports. Here is one of them, dated July 6 of this year: committee employees examined several sites in the Krasnoufimsky district.
The same picture is observed in the Tugulym region: here, in the village of Gileva, there are “vegetation structures (greenhouses) used for growing fruits and vegetables.” “Littering has been identified throughout the area: woodpiles are being placed chopped wood, piles of cuttings, logs, boards, rusty metal barrels, pipes, wire and other metal products. Holes dug in the soil were discovered where they are dumped household waste. In some places there are piles of plastic bags and films, abandoned transport units. In the southern part of the site from unedged boards and sheds were built from cuttings,” department employees report.
Each violation is recorded and submitted for consideration to the appropriate authorities. In addition, Rosselkhoznadzor employees take samples to conduct research on the content of residual amounts of pesticides and heavy metals in the soil.
They find everything. For example, in one of the areas near Nizhny Tagil (Gornouralsk urban district), as a result of a routine inspection, land contamination was discovered.
For violations, enterprises are subject to fines, which at first glance seem rather large - amounts reach up to 100 thousand rubles. and more. Here are some of the most common violations:
But even high fines are an ineffective measure. “They pay this money and get it back in just a couple of days,” an agricultural producer who wished to remain anonymous shared in a private conversation with a website reporter.
Sverdlovsk Rospotrebnadzor regularly conducts studies of fruit and vegetable products for their content harmful substances.
As Ilya Bondarev explained, CEO UMMC-Agro, only 23% of vegetables grown in our region in greenhouses are produced in compliance with all technologies.
The Sverdlovsk region is one of the five regions that lost greenhouse farms during the perestroika period. According to the calculations of the Ministry of Agriculture and Industrial Culture, in order to fully provide the residents of the region with their vegetables, it is necessary to build at least another 60 hectares of greenhouses.
“Proper” greenhouses are a costly business. Thus, the total cost of construction of the first stage of an innovative greenhouse plant in the village. Sadovy, including the energy center, amounted to 5.3 billion rubles.
By the way, fertilizers (including nitrates) are applied in all greenhouses - otherwise vegetables simply cannot be grown. But it’s like the famous saying: any medicine is poison, and any poison is medicine, it’s all a matter of doses.
When grown using low-volume technologies, which are used in modern greenhouses, it is possible to control the flow of substances into the fruit. The solution supplied to feed plants is balanced in terms of the amount of macroelements. The fruits simply cannot absorb more than there is - there is nowhere to eat. Accordingly, harmful substances do not accumulate in them.
Nitrates in small quantities are not terrible - they are also found in plants that are never fertilized with anything. Our body can digest a moderate dose of nitrates without any health consequences. But if the dose is exceeded, conditionally safe nitrates, under the influence of enzymes, turn into extremely harmful nitrites, which - in short - disrupt the oxygen supply to cells.
Determining which vegetable is on the counter - with a high content of harmful substances or not - is quite difficult. But there are some rules.
We have compiled a short photo instruction for you.
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| Ideal shape and gloss are a sure sign of chemistry. As are the sizes: especially large fruits most likely grew that way from outside help. So take your vegetables standard size. To determine the freshness of a cucumber, you need to look at its elasticity and the condition of the tubercles: they should be sharp and intact. |
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| Black dots and spots on cabbage leaves are a sure sign of a fungus that for some reason loves nitrate fruits. |
Rospotrebnadzor specialists do not advise purchasing food from kiosks, tents, or street markets - as a rule, this is where vegetables grown on Chinese farms end up. And when buying vegetables in stores, you should carefully study the labeling - it is better to give preference to well-known regional producers - these are, for example, the Chelyabinsk agricultural complex "Churilovo", the Verkhnepyshminsk farm "Teplichnoe", the Tyumen "Ritza".
In China, this method has been used for a long time, and many years of practice show its effectiveness. Experienced summer residents note a number of advantages of this method:
In order to sow tomato seeds you need ordinary soil from the garden good quality. Take the desired soil from the area where nothing has grown for at least a year. The earth must be sifted, cleared of debris, and warmed well. Pour the soil with a hot one percent solution of potassium permanganate.
Important! There is no need to fertilize the soil with humus, as putrefactive microorganisms live in it. Because of them, all seedlings may die or grow weak.
And for picking you can use a special mixture rich in peat. You can dive in peat cups sizes from 100 to 200 ml.
Before seeds are sown in the ground, they need to be prepared. First you need to hold them for three hours in an ash extract. It is prepared as follows: pour one liter of boiling water into two tablespoons of ash and leave for a day.
After the seeds have been in the ash solution, pour them with a strong solution of potassium permanganate for 20 minutes. Potassium permanganate disinfects seeds and destroys existing infections.
Then you need to place the seeds in a biostimulator solution for 12 hours. The preparations “Epina”, “Zircon”, “Humata” are perfect.
And finally, you need to stimulate the seeds cold temperature. Place the seeds in a gauze bag or just a cloth and leave them in the refrigerator for a day. After this, the seeds are ready for sowing.
It is necessary to sow seeds in the ground immediately after removing them from the refrigerator.
The main condition of the Chinese method of growing seedlings is that the seeds must be cold, you need to make sure that they do not heat up. The distance between the seeds should be at least two centimeters. After sowing upper layer moisten the soil using a spray bottle, cover the box with soil with cellophane film or glass. Thus, a greenhouse effect is created in the boxes.
It is advisable to keep the soil with the sown seeds near the radiator to obtain the required amount of heat. The seeds germinate in five days. As soon as the shoots appear, the film can be removed and the box placed in a lighted place, for example, on a windowsill. To prevent the sprouts from reaching for the light, thereby stretching the stems, it is necessary to provide them with uniform 12-hour lighting. You can create it using LED lamps.
Important! The Chinese tomato growing system is based on moon calendar. You need to sow seeds during the waning moon in the constellation Scorpio. Thanks to this, tomatoes develop a strong root system.
According to the Chinese method, it is important to harden the seedlings to make them strong and resistant to external influences. To do this, place the box with seedlings in a cool place at night.
It is necessary to plant tomato seedlings after a month, when the moon repeats its cycle again and is in the constellation Scorpio. Within a month, the sprouts have fairly strong stems and two pairs of leaves. The picking method is very important: the sprouts are not transplanted along with the roots, but are cut at ground level. It is necessary to cut with scissors so that possible infections remain in the ground. This way the tomatoes will be healthy and strong.
Cut seedling bushes are immediately planted in peat cups, prepared in advance, and covered with film. Then the cups need to be put away in a cool, dark place for several days. Next, the seedlings are grown under normal conditions.
Another method of picking is rooting in water. The sprouts are also cut off at the base, but are placed not in the ground, but in cups of water. The seedlings are removed for a week in a cool, dark place. After the bushes give roots, they are planted in the ground.
In the period before planting in the ground outside, the seedlings require special care. The process requires a lot of effort, but the result is worth it. Basic rules for caring for tomato seedlings:
Even scientists cannot determine the contents of vegetables that illegal Chinese grow in the Irkutsk region
Nobody likes Chinese vegetables, but, cursing and spitting, we all buy them from time to time. Until now, complaints have been about vegetables brought from China itself - large, bright and absolutely tasteless. However, the most serious suspicion against them was only their genetically modified origin: for rapid growth and increased weight, foreign genes are introduced into them, which are still unknown how they will later come back to haunt the human body.
Much more serious accusations from both ordinary consumers and agricultural specialists are leveled against tomatoes, cabbage and other everyday vegetables grown by illegal Chinese near Irkutsk. According to vague stories from the local population, the beds of vegetation are being suppressed with elephantine doses of fertilizers, most of which are smuggled from China, and it is unknown what they contain. Our newspaper decided to conduct its own biased investigation: who grows what and how in greenhouses throughout the Irkutsk region and what grows there as a result...
Moreover, their workers do not even have health certificates, and in most cases, permission to stay on the territory of the Russian Federation
Chinese “collective farms” are often illegal and have neither permission to grow vegetables nor certificates for their sale
A farmer from the village of Markovo, Olga Shestakova, said that the land she bought was arbitrarily seized by the Chinese.
The Chinese drive commissions away from their plantations with sticks. The root of evil always lies in impunity. This was the first thought that came to the author’s mind when he began searching for a body that would control Chinese expansion into suburban gardens. Despite a good dozen services and small departments in the infrastructure of Irkutsk government structures, the answer to simple questions - where do Chinese greenhouses come from along the city limits, where do they get seeds and fertilizers from, what and how are vegetables fertilized and with whose permission are they sold in city markets - - plunged officials into trepidation and panic. Looking ahead, it is worth noting that the services monitoring the activities of Chinese plantations have just begun to appear and are still operating at half their designed capacity.
Meanwhile, Olga Shestakova, a farmer from the village of Markovo, called the editorial office. She said that the land she bought was arbitrarily seized by the Chinese, they set up their greenhouses on it and now they grow cabbage, which they don’t even eat themselves: if they want to cook food from this vegetable, they beg Olga for organic cabbage from the farm. Yours is for sale only. Meanwhile, her cows, who accidentally ate Chinese cabbage, saw their milk yield drop sharply, and some of the cows became very ill. Moreover, from time to time the Chinese hire Russian farm laborers. To make Russians work faster and longer, they are fed something suspicious. Olga Nikolaevna’s husband tried these pills and ran around like crazy for a while until he collapsed in exhaustion, clutching his heart.
The head of the plant growing department of the Main Department of Agriculture of the Irkutsk Region, Vladimir Reshetsky, honestly admitted: the mechanism for checking the Chinese in Irkutsk simply has not been worked out and is not functioning today. The Chinese work on their plantations illegally, and it is unknown what fertilizers they apply completely uncontrolled, without observing either the dosage or processing time.
We have a quota for the number of Chinese citizens who work at local agricultural enterprises - this year it is only 300 people (the quota is approved annually. - Author's note). They must come to a certain enterprise and undergo a medical examination,” said Vladimir Yegorovich. - But you can see for yourself that there are many more Chinese working in the fields. These are illegal immigrants who bend birch trees in the fields, stretch film over them and plant vegetables. Last year we tried to check these greenhouses, we sent two employees from our department, young man and a woman - the Chinese did not allow the commission to board with sticks in their hands.
The Chinese even fake vegetables. In the Irkutsk region there are only four greenhouse agricultural enterprises with protected soils, growing products all year round. These are the Irkutsk Iskra, the Ust-Ilimsk Angara, the brotherly Pursey and the Teplichnoe farm in the Angarsk region. There are eleven greenhouse farms where the Chinese officially and legally work under a quota - in the Irkutsk and Angarsk regions. They constitute healthy competition for local producers. By the way, last year the quota for work in the local agricultural industry was allocated to 600 citizens of the Middle Kingdom. But this year, as the chairman of the interdepartmental commission of the regional labor committee, Irina Sokolova, explained, the quota was halved, because priority in working in the fields for growing vegetables is given to local rural residents.
All other Chinese “collective farms” are illegal and have neither permission to grow vegetables nor certificates for their sale. Moreover, their workers do not even have health certificates, and in most cases, permission to stay on the territory of the Russian Federation. They create unhealthy competition by growing tasteless and potentially hazardous to health cucumbers and tomatoes, using vile methods to promote them on the market. For example, very often, when selling their vegetables in winter, they pass them off as products from the same four greenhouse farms listed above, the quality of whose products the residents of the region have long appreciated and trust.
There have been complaints from customers that the skin peels off beautiful, shiny winter cucumbers after a day of storage in the refrigerator, and huge juicy tomatoes, when fried... turn into steam, leaving only the skin. Experts warn that you should not buy local tomatoes in winter. Even cucumbers, which ripen in winter greenhouses before tomatoes, appear on the market no earlier than February.
And one of the main complaints of farmers from the regional administration against Chinese illegal gardeners is economic: they take out of Russia not money earned from selling low-quality vegetables, but timber.
Residents of the region are in a pre-scurvy state A striking discrepancy is observed in Chinese vegetables between appearance and taste. This is understandable in relation to imported vegetables from China: they are taken from the garden while still green so that they ripen on the way, and therefore they do not have time to take the necessary food from the ground. nutrients and do not acquire their natural taste.
The head of the laboratory of physiology and plant productivity of SIFIBR, Yuri Palkin, commented on the reasons for the tastelessness and uselessness of vegetables grown by the Chinese within our region, as well as the main harm of this phenomenon of the local agricultural industry for residents of the region. In all vegetable growing and farms, including gardening cooperatives and personal plots supplying vegetables to the table of the average resident of the region, no more than 150,000 tons of vegetables are grown per year.
This amounts to no more than 60 kilograms of quality vegetables, which theoretically end up on each of us’s tables every year. And this is exactly two times less than the annual supply of vegetables a person needs. But in practice, people are forced to buy cheaper Chinese vegetables, further missing out on vegetable juices, microelements and vitamins that cannot be replenished by anything else. That is, we are all in the position of the discoverers of Siberia, whose expeditions died not from lack of nutrition, but from a lack of vitamins. Simply put, from scurvy.
The Chinese either bring fertilizers with them or use local ones. They either don’t have the money to purchase quality fertilizers, or they feel sorry for them and use everything they have at hand. No mineral fertilizers- use organic. That is, humus, manure, feces,” explained Yuri Fedorovich. - To kill all pathogenic bacteria, you need to compost the humus for two years. And the Chinese use fresh manure. What could be in it? Yes, anything!
In addition, the Chinese widely use growth stimulants, physiologically active growth substances. They are not used in Irkutsk, so scientists find it difficult to say what harm they might cause. But even the fact that plants are forced to ripen much faster than the time allotted by nature, disrupting the cycles of development and accumulation useful substances, of course, does not add any taste or benefit to them. Experts say that growth stimulants cause plants to produce unnaturally large fruits that have no fruit juice, but increased content fiber.
They are lower in sugars and vitamins. This is especially harmful, given that Chinese vegetables are cheaper; they are purchased en masse for kindergartens, schools, hospitals and military units - that is, where people, on the contrary, vitally need increased nutrition with high-quality products.
Vegetables in shit According to Vladimir Reshetsky, the Chinese have come up with an original and low-cost method of extraction organic fertilizers. They negotiate with local residents and, for a small bribe or even on a voluntary basis, empty cesspools village public toilets(those same “white houses”, painted with lime, with a hole in the floor, which so surprise foreigners. - Author’s note.) Then this “biomass” is used to fertilize the beds with vegetables that come to our table.
The author himself undertook a trip to one of the Khomutov farms, where the Chinese are in charge. The only girl with minimal command of the rudiments of the Russian language was the girl cleaning the farmhands' barracks. She explained to the author for a long time that they fertilize the vegetables “what are the eggs like,” and she only knew the word “mother” and showed the rest until the author understood that he meant chicken droppings.
In one of the outbuildings there were multi-ton reserves of Russian-made diammophosphate and ammonium nitrate. These products are produced legally, but the Chinese also manage to turn them into harm. As Vladimir Reshetsky explained, the Chinese add huge amounts of ammonium nitrate to the soil. Normally, it is absorbed well and is harmless to the human body. But when the amount of nitrate exceeds the norm, it does not have time to completely decompose and its half-life product, nitrate nitrogen, which is very harmful, enters the body.
The fact is that in China, saltpeter is poured onto crops in layers: it is warm there and it quickly decomposes. It’s cold here, and the nitrophification process is greatly slowed down,” said Vladimir Egorovich.
Both seeds and fertilizers are common contraband In fact, people who buy vegetables grown by the Chinese in the fields of Irkutsk are playing a dangerous lottery with their health - even narrow specialists do not know what they are consuming. It is unknown not only what and how it was fertilized and in what conditions it grew, but also from what seeds it grew. The fact is that, according to Rosselkhoznadzor specialists, the Chinese smuggle fertilizers and even seeds into Russian territory.
Albina Zaitseva, Deputy Head of the Plant Quarantine Department of Rosselkhoznadzor, explained that private individuals import seed material prohibited. Such cargo is confiscated at the border, destroyed or disinfected and (in the latter case) becomes unsuitable for landing.
At the same time, Albina Mikhailovna admitted that only international airports in Irkutsk and Bratsk, however, the Chinese manage to transport seeds and fertilizers by rail and by road:
You know, the Chinese will swallow it, but they will make it through. And they tend to bring their fertilizers, poisons and seeds to us. Officially, in our region, the Chinese do not buy fertilizers at all. We have three stages of inspections: at the border, at the destination and field inspection. And often it is possible to detect foreign seeds only in the field. You ask the Chinese: “Whose lands? Whose seeds? They only answer: “I don’t know.” We spend a long time looking for the owners of the land who leased it to the Chinese. Starting this year we will fine them. In the meantime, we are checking the crops for the presence of weeds, diseases and pests. We have seen how the Chinese throw ammonium nitrate in handfuls at the root - without dosage, so that the mass grows.
Starting this summer, checks will become stricter. Inspections of the Bokhansky and Irkutsk districts will begin from the beginning of July. However, apart from fines, no other punitive measures are provided for the owner of the land. In any case, it is unlikely that Rosselkhoznadzor employees will uproot illegal plantings of Chinese vegetables.
Rosselkhoznadzor specialists are confident that even if you take fertilizers and vegetables to local toxicology laboratories, they will not detect any foreign substances, because they are not tuned in to unfamiliar drugs that are simply not used in Russia.
In China, there are more than a thousand large manufacturers of fertilizers, which produce them based on organochlorines - a chemical compound that, if used incorrectly, settles in the body (in the blood and joints) and is no longer excreted, said the department of plant protection and agrochemistry of Rosselkhoznadzor. - A Chinese drugs are not included in the annually issued catalog of approved drugs (pesticides and agrochemicals) that have passed state registration. Therefore, it is almost impossible to detect them in the laboratory today.
Mysterious stimulants At our request, the operational customs laboratory carried out analyzes of several substances that we managed to seize from Chinese illegal immigrants. The fact is that, according to unofficial information, in Chinese vegetables and fruits Lately at laboratory research began to find pesticides - toxic chemicals that are used in agriculture to combat insect pests. The content of poisons was many times higher than sanitary standards. 15 different poisons were identified, and among them DDT and drugs based on it, prohibited for use in Russia.
Three substances were provided for analysis: a poisonous red liquid, a gray-green powder in a bag with hieroglyphs, and several tablets. According to farmer Olga Shestakova, who repeatedly observed how the Chinese processed vegetables and signaled to all sorts of authorities, the liquid is a growth stimulant, the powder is a fertilizer, and the tablet is the very stimulants that the Chinese feed Russian farm laborers, “so that they don’t get tired,” and at the same time they eat themselves.
They treat the tomato ovaries with the liquid, after which they grow with incredible speed and grow unnaturally large. Their foreman gives each worker a bottle and a brush, which they use to smear the plants, and after work they are taken back and locked in the utility room,” said farmer Shestakova. - They dissolve the powder in water, which is used to water the beds. And the tablets are given to the farm laborers before they start work, and they, without straightening up, plow the beds.
The operational customs laboratory still cannot say what fertilizers consist of. It has only been determined that they contain 70% mineral fertilizers, and 30% organic substances, but based on this fact it is impossible to judge the harm or benefit of the drug. Now the analyzes are still ongoing, and our newspaper will report additionally on their results. By fax, the inscriptions from the package of fertilizers were forwarded to Chita, one of the senior state customs inspectors working with the identification of Chinese products. The inscription on the package turned out to be very harmless, but not a word was said about the composition of the substance.
The label stated that it was "cap ta" ("great recovery") - "a product that improves the quality of agricultural products, protects against harmful effects, approved by the All-China Agricultural Center for the Control of Pest Damage to Fields." Simply put, it is likely that these are the same pesticides that are prohibited for use in our country.
But what happened with the pills was very misterious story. Olga Nikolaevna asked for them supposedly for her husband. The Chinese agreed suspiciously easily and gave several opened “foot wraps”, in which the tablets were packed two in one cell. Upon translation, it turned out that these were painkillers “chuan shan” (“mountain massif”), which had a state pharmaceutical registered number.
When identified and examined for the presence of narcotic drugs, potent, psychotropic and toxic substances, it turned out that this medicine is very similar to citramon - headache pills sold in any Irkutsk pharmacy without a prescription. The Chinese “stimulant” included four substances: phenacetin (an antipyretic, analgesic), amidopyrine (or pyramidon - an effect like phenacetin plus anti-inflammatory), a mild stimulant caffeine (for a short-term increase in performance and elimination of drowsiness) and phenobarbital. The latter substance is formally potent, providing a sedative, hypnotic and antispasmodic effect, but when combined with other drugs it is not a violation of the law.
In the first of the Irkutsk pharmacies, to which the author turned for advice, they commented that a medicine with such contents can be used to relieve pain and relieve the first symptoms of a cold. Although, depending on the content of phenobarbital in complex preparations, it can be classified as a potent substance - in these tablets the phenobarbital content is too low for this. And it certainly cannot be used as a stimulant.
However, experts said that the packaging method reminded them of other pills containing sibutramine, the active ingredient in the notorious Thai diet pills, which actually have a strong stimulating effect. Judging by the described effect, it is likely that the Chinese use it by distributing it to farm laborers, and Olga Pavlovna was given other, harmless pills: either after realizing that her husband was in pain, or deliberately, for the purpose of secrecy. Yes, and it’s doubtful from the point of view common sense that the Chinese tried to massively stimulate farm laborers with headache pills.
Support domestic manufacturer Summing up the results of the journalistic investigation, you come to the conclusion that it is very appropriate to say: support domestic producers, buy vegetables grown by our peasants and farmers in our fertile fields! They are both tastier and healthier, while cheap Chinese “crafts” are tasteless, like grass, and even really dangerous to health.
Dubious, genetically modified seeds, incorrect ripening dates, underdosed use of nitrates, uncontrolled use of pesticides prohibited for use in our country, growth stimulants unknown in their effect on the human body - and all this was smuggled, without quality certificates. Feces used as fertilizer, teeming with pathogenic bacteria, and gardeners suffering from psoriasis, lice and scabies without undergoing medical examination. And the result is sterile fiber instead of juicy pulp. We are not so poor that we pay so much for cheap Chinese vegetables! And this is a fact, not advertising.
Bert Cork, Sergei Ignatenko
How do the Chinese grow greenhouse vegetables near Krasnoyarsk? Why do they exceed the maximum permissible concentrations of harmful substances? Why doesn’t the terrible word GMO scare comrades from the Middle Kingdom?
To interview one of the Chinese vegetable growers working in greenhouses in the Berezovsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the RP correspondent had to work hard. Find a friend who has lived in China for several years and knows Chinese well. Stock up on expensive cigarettes. Disguise the recorder. Arrive at a greenhouse town and buy a decent batch of tomatoes and cucumbers in a makeshift shop. Only after this did one of the workers, a former construction worker from Qinghai province, agree to step aside to smoke and talk. And after talking, he began to answer questions.
- Tell me, why does your cabbage ripen in a month and a half, and in the dachas next door in no less than three?
Because Russians grow completely different vegetables. We never use local seeds, we import everything from China. They are much better than yours. Our agronomists are doing very serious work. They create varieties so that vegetables produce a large harvest and grow quickly. You have a lot of land, you can plant a lot of cabbage and wait a long time for it to grow. We have little land, but many people. Therefore, in China they are trying to develop varieties that ripen in weeks, so that new vegetables can be planted in the vacant space.
Mr. Jan (that’s what RP’s interlocutor calls the owner of the greenhouses where he works. - RP) said that when he first started working in Russia, he tried to plant Russian seeds, thinking that they were better suited to your climate. But these vegetables grew poorly, they were constantly sick, and the harvest was very small. After that, he switched to Chinese, and everything worked out.
Now the Russians have begun to understand how good our seeds are. The man from whom Mr. Dzhan buys the seeds says that now many Russians come to him and ask him to sell them. He's selling because they'll have to buy them again next year anyway. All our vegetables are hybrid. If you collect seeds from ripe cucumbers or tomatoes yourself, they still won’t produce good offspring. The harvest will be much smaller. Therefore, it is better to buy expensive seeds bred and collected by Chinese agronomists and not to save.
- Please advise how to care for vegetables so that they grow faster and produce a large harvest?
First, you need to fertilize the soil very well so that there is enough for the seeds. As soon as the sprouts appear, you need to monitor them all the time: treat them against diseases, pests, and destroy weeds. Be sure to feed the plants well to keep them strong. Your land is rich, you can give less fertilizer than in China, but you still need it. Once a week we spray the sprouts with fertilizer, which we also import from China. It was created by our agronomists specifically for industrial cultivation in greenhouses in cold climates. As soon as you start using it, everything grows quickly and well. We also add substances that plants need to the soil - they help increase the yield.
- What kind of substances are these? What do they contain?
I do not know exactly. Let's look at the packaging ( brings a small bag with some grains inside). This is top dressing for tomatoes. Here's how to use it. You need to sprinkle a few peas under each bush once a week. The composition is written here: superphosphate, urea, and some other unfamiliar names. I do not know them. But I know that this is a very good fertilizer, you start pouring it in, and the result is immediately visible. Chinese agronomists are the best in the world, they know everything about vegetables, they have studied everything. We have the most advanced science, new discoveries are made every day.
We also use Russian fertilizers because they are cheaper, but they do not give the same result. You definitely need to buy our Chinese fertilizers and give them to your vegetables.
- What Russian fertilizers do you use?
- This is ammonium nitrate, a concentrated nitrogen fertilizer. How do you use it?
Sprinkle it on the ground and then water it until it is absorbed.
Saltpeter, packaged in bags. Photo: Nikolay Titov/Fotoimedia/TASS
- How often?
Once a week. One bag is enough for one greenhouse.
- Do you fertilize all your vegetables this way?
All. What is it?
Ammonium nitrate should absolutely not be used to feed cucumbers: they will contain a lot of nitrates, they will become hazardous to health...
As Mr. Jan tells us, that’s what we do. If this is a bad fertilizer, why are you releasing it? It wasn’t made in China, but in Russia, right? We are offended when they say that we use harmful fertilizers. It is not true. Maybe your Russian fertilizers are bad, but ours, Chinese ones, are all good.
Tell me, if you don’t like the vegetables we grow, why do you buy them? Why are you taking it out in truckloads? If you don’t like it, eat the ones you grew yourself. If our tomatoes and cucumbers are dangerous to health, then why do you pass them off as your own - Russians? My friend and I once went to the market specifically to see what vegetables they sold there. All of ours are there, but we recognize them - we raised them ourselves. Only the price is ten times higher. And in the stores it’s the same - all the cucumbers and tomatoes are ours. Mr. Dzhan says that Russian traders then claim that they did not buy the vegetables from us, but that they grew them themselves or brought them from Europe. And the price is raised to the skies. And during the season they buy from us for ridiculous money. We recently sold a whole truckload of tomatoes for only 5 rubles per kilogram, just to cover the cost of the boxes. And your merchants then ask for them 10 times more, I saw it myself.
Some traders specifically ask us to grow huge tomatoes. They then pass them off as your most famous tomatoes from the south of the Krasnoyarsk Territory... I forgot what they are called...
- Minusinsk?
Exactly! They say they are considered the most delicious here. If our tomatoes were bad, they could not be passed off as the best. And the merchants give it out, and no one complains, everyone likes it.
- Do you like the vegetables you grow?
Of course, they are not as tasty as in China. How else? There is little sun here, little warmth. We have to build greenhouses and light stoves so that the plants don’t freeze. Feed them with fertilizers so that they have time to grow and produce a harvest. And for vegetables to gain flavor, they must ripen for a long time, under the sun. Therefore, we grow all our vegetables in a separate greenhouse. We don’t feed them anything so as not to rush them. It tastes better this way. And we plant other varieties for ourselves - those that we are used to at home. They yield less, but we like them better.
- Why not grow all vegetables in all greenhouses without fertilizing and fertilizers?
It will take a very long time and it will be unprofitable. If you wait for vegetables to ripen without using fertilizers created specifically for industrial growing, they will turn out to be very expensive. Then they will cost not 5, but 50 rubles per kilogram. And to work in Russia, the business must be very profitable. After all, here you not only have to pay for land and work, but also give a lot of money to officials. Mr. Jan said that he pays so that we are not caught and sent back to our homeland, so that we are not accused of growing bad vegetables, so that our greenhouses are not bulldozed - this has already been done. He pays all the time and is still afraid all the time. In Russia, the Chinese are treated very poorly; they create problems all the time.
A Chinese worker in one of the greenhouses where vegetables are grown. Photo: Alexander Kondratyuk/TASS
- What about the locals? Don't create problems?
We rarely communicate with them, only when we suddenly need to buy something urgently. They don’t like us either, and very often behave impolitely. Many are offended that we occupied their land. But who is to blame for this? They themselves. Have you been to China - have you seen how much land we have lying idle? Not at all. Everything is busy, everything is being processed, there is not a free meter. Nobody will take our land, because it is all used. And in Russia, huge fields are empty. If you don't need them, why not give them to those who want and know how to work? Who is to blame that the Russians don’t want to work, but we do? That they don’t know how to grow vegetables well, but we can? It would be better if they came and asked us to teach what and how to do, and not be angry with us. We could teach a lot and share knowledge.
- What kind, for example?
Yes, at least what kind of film for greenhouses is needed to grow three or four crops per season in a cold climate. Our scientists have created a very good material, it does not tear, it only stretches. Lets in a lot of light: even when it’s twilight, it’s as bright inside as during the day. Keeps warm well. In Russia they don’t know how to make such film; they have to import it from China. If the Russians learned to produce it, it would be beneficial for everyone. But your officials, instead of sending capable people to learn from Chinese experience, prefer to say that our film is harmful. You have to bury it in the ground when the working season ends so that no one notices anything, otherwise they will find it and say that it is dangerous because they do not understand what it is made of.
Honestly, I think that they make up so many bad things about us because they don’t understand how we get such a good harvest. That’s why they come up with the idea that we use harmful fertilizers. But our secret is extremely simple - you need to work hard. Get up early in the morning and work until sunset, don’t straighten your back all day. We water the soil with our sweat. Russians don’t know how to work that much and don’t want to. They either have lunch or... what do you mean by idleness? I remembered: a smoke break. They also drink a lot. That's why they invent all kinds of nonsense about us. This makes it easier to explain why ours is growing and theirs is not. We harvest 100 kg of vegetables from one meter per season, and they collect 10. So judge for yourself who can work and who can’t. We have only one worker working on one greenhouse, but at least ten Russian workers would be needed.
The ruble will become even cheaper, it will become completely unprofitable to do business in Russia, and we will leave. Probably, only after this our work will be appreciated, when there is no one to grow vegetables and the shops are empty. Russians cannot feed themselves. So it’s better to say thank you that we’re feeding you for now.
- If it’s not a secret, how much do you earn per month now?
Very little. I come to Russia to work for the third year in a row. The first time we received a decent amount, enough to renovate the house. The second time I earned less, but still twice as much as I earned in China. I don’t even know how many will be released this year. The ruble is getting cheaper all the time. I'm afraid I'll be left with almost nothing. If so, then I won’t come next year. Of course, if I can find a job at home, otherwise I may have no choice and will have to return here.
You understand that the Chinese do not go to work in Russia because they have a good life? Life is very difficult for us here. You work 16 hours a day, and there’s not even a place to wash properly. Mr. Jan says that he would like to build a good house with all amenities for visiting workers, but there is no point. It is unknown when your authorities will want to bulldoze everything and drive us off the ground. We have to huddle in temporary shelters. Every year they are forced to build greenhouses in a new location and start everything over again.
I had a chance to visit the place where the Chinese greenhouses stood last year. There's still nothing growing there—grass is barely growing through. Why do you think?
Because we cleared the land very well of all weeds, we weren’t lazy. The compositions that our scientists create help get rid of all harmful plants once and for all. But don’t worry: they don’t affect beneficial plants. This is how they are specially created. If you start growing, for example, tomatoes on the land from under our greenhouses, they will grow well and produce an excellent harvest. And there will be nothing harmful in them. Many locals accuse us of ruining their land. But this is not so, we are only improving it. There is no need to be afraid of what you do not understand.
Aftertaste
A smiling and talkative worker gladly sold glossy, shiny tomatoes and small, elastic, dark green cucumbers with pimples to the RP correspondent. To verify his words that all vegetables grown in Chinese greenhouses are absolutely safe for health, we submitted them for analysis to an independent laboratory, Biochemical Research Center LLC.
In addition, benzopyrene was found in cucumbers, which should not be there at all. This first class carcinogen destroys bones and liver and causes malignant tumors. Arsenic and fluorine were found in tomatoes - in quantities twice the maximum permissible concentration. These toxic substances destroy human protein.
Unknown chemicals were also discovered, the composition of which could not be determined in the laboratory. What effect they can have on the human body is probably known only to the mysterious Chinese “agronomists”.
