Previously, US marine products businessmen in cooperation with hotels in Shanghai hold a seafood festival, providing consumers menus with US food in Chinese.

US farm produce businessmen are holding the seafood festival as China will soon enter WTO.

According to customs statistics from January to July, US edible oil seeds, frozen meat, and milk and butter goods passing through Shanghai customs respectively increased 68.2 percent, 219.7 percent and 80.5 percent over the same period of last year.

Fruit and nuts, feather and down imports increased as high as 289 times and 56.6 times the figure for last year, respectively.

At the same time, sturgeons which live in cold water have successfully reproduced in the Yangtze River. It is a favorable food in many Shanghai hotels together with Salmon from Alaska.

Farmers planting water melons, oranges and apples in Anhui, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Shaanxi provinces are busy with registering trade marks, after seeing that “Sunkist” orange from the United States are well-sold because of its brand.

With superior geographic position and better techniques, Shanghai has imported more than 300 kinds of seeds of vegetables and flowers. And now it grows 30,000 tons of overseas vegetables annually.

Xu Yanming, owner of a sturgeons farm in northern Shanghai, said that due to the improvement of breeding techniques and the market demands, he has introduced several kinds of fish from cold areas. His 40,000-square-meter breeding pond has become the largest sturgeon breeding center in east China.

Sturgeons sell at more than 200 yuan (US$12) per kg but still cannot meet market demands.

Shao Wangyu, professor with a WTO research center in Shanghai, said that Chinese and overseas farm produce compete with each other. The influx of overseas produce has given Chinese consumers more choices.

He said Chinese farmers should increase market awareness and learn marketing strategies from their overseas counterparts.

On March 23, shortly after China announced that it would lift restrictions on importing US oranges, Sunkist oranges began to roll into the Chinese market with a big publicity campaign.

US businessmen plan to export 500 million yuan worth of Sunkist oranges to China in the coming five years.

The chefs from the United States are scheduled to teach 1,200 people in major cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Dalian in one year and a half.

Greg Drescher, a senior official with the Culinary Institute of America, said the training program is funded by US Department of Agriculture, and supported by over 30 US wheat, peanuts, wine, oranges and marine products companies.

(Eastday.com 09/26/2000)