Colin Steer, Associate Editor - Opinion
A student of the College of Agriculture, Science and Education examines a bearing tomato plant, on the school's farm in Portland, last year. Like China, Jamaica has the potential to make big earnings from vegetable farming. - File
Hangzhou, China:
Just about the time that then Prime Minister Edward Seaga's push for ornamental horticulture, winter vegetables and tissue culture began to collapse in the mid 1980s, a Chinese company started operations that would later incorporate similar projects and has since grown into a multibillion-dollar business.
The Transfar Group with headquarters in Hangzhou city in the Zheijiang province was started as a family business mainly in chemical manufacturing, particularly household detergents in 1986. Its principals subsequently acquired state -owned land and started experimenting in bio-technology, tissue culture, logistics management and other businesses. Transfar Agriculture was in fact started in 2001 and made no profits for the next four years. Last year, in the wake of its phenomenal growth in the production and export of orchids, anthuriums and other tropical plants, melons the size of grapefruits and cucumbers about a third the size of the regular vegetable bought in Jamaica, the company recorded worldwide sales of US $700 million and currently employs 5,000 people.
Significant growth typical
This dramatic and significant growth is typical of many of China's companies under its peculiar mix of socialist control and market-oriented private businesses.
The Transfar Group management says it follows the core idea of social responsibility with its aim of creating a harmonious company culture of mutual respect between employees and management.
Deputy General Manager Chen Jun told a group of visiting Latin American and Caribbean journalists last week that the aim is to create a vigorous and sustainable enterprise and boost social development. "Our business goal is to become China's top cross-industry group with proper business combinations having self-owned intellectual properties, core competitive strength and agriculture business, as well as to explore investment business," he said.
Today, Transfar Agriculture owns advanced commercial seedling and potted-plant production and a production system centreing on high-tech model farm systems including 10 smaller farms across China.
Its products are being sold in over 20 provinces in China and are exported to South East Asia, mainly Japan and the United States. The company is but one of the many emerging business conglomerates in the ancient city of Hangzhou, which already experiences phenomenal local and foreign tourism traffic numbering in excess of four million people annually.
The Transfar Group's expansion into agriculture from chemicals and into logistics planning and investments points to the real possibilities of focused planning and the tragedy of some of Jamaica's failed ventures.
Company started ornamental horticulture, winter vegetables and tissue culture and has since grown into a multibillion-dollar business.
