CHINESE cabbages grown by a Green Village Agricultural Produce Cooperation in Jiaozhou are selling well.

“So far, we have sold more than 1,000 boxes of Chinese cabbages. Every year, our cabbages were sold out before the Spring Festival,” said Zhang Jubo, president of the cooperation.

The cabbages have national certificates and are wrapped with Jiaozhou cabbage gift boxes.

The organic cabbages are much more expensive than regular ones. It costs about 600 yuan to grow cabbages in a field covering an area of 666 square meters, but costs for Zhang’s field of the same size is about 3,500 yuan. “All of our cabbages are organic. We don’t use any farm chemicals and all the insects are caught by hand,” said Zhang. Meanwhile, the labor costs, package costs and quality control costs are also very high. “But high costs bring high profits. We can make about 30,000 yuan from a 666-square-meter field,” he said.

“Jiaozhou Chinese cabbage is a famous brand, so we have to make big investments to ensure high quality. We don’t worry about the market as long as we have high quality,” he said.

At present, there are several companies in Jiaozhou which grow high-quality organic Chinese cabbages. They also sell very well in the province and Guangdong including Shenzhen. Some are even exported to South Korea and Japan.

 (Wang Yuanyuan, Liu Lina, Bi Yanxiao)