Peach industry drives shared prosperity in Jiuzhai township
In the peach orchards of Jiuzhai township, Mengyin county, Linyi in East China's Shandong province, autumn is anything but quiet. At a peach planting base in Changling village, growers are applying autumn fertilizer and pruning branches.
"Selling the peaches does not mean the work is done. Applying base fertilizer in autumn and building up the trees is the only way to get good fruit next year," said Zhao Shengguo, a grower at work in the orchard. "In the past I only picked and sold peaches. Now I manage them from spring to autumn. If you take good care of a tree, you can earn a lot more per mu." His plain words reflect a shift in the township's peach industry from one-season income to year-round management.
As a core peach-producing area in Mengyin, Jiuzhai has 105,000 mu (about 7,000 hectares) of peach trees with annual output exceeding 400 million jin (200,000 metric tons), and has been recognized as a national township with a distinctive rural peach industry worth more than 1 billion yuan. In recent years, the township has worked across the whole industry chain, focusing on standardized cultivation, diversified business formats and shared-benefit mechanisms.
The township regularly invites fruit tree experts to the fields to train growers in spring and autumn management, from fertilizing and pruning to pest control. Working with the chief expert team of the national peach industry system and the Zhengzhou Fruit Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, it has selected nine varieties suited to Mengyin from the "Zhongyou" and "Zhongpan" lines, gradually renewing older orchards.
Beyond production, Jiuzhai has built a system combining trading, storage and e-commerce. The Lianwanya yellow peach market, the largest by volume in Mengyin county, handles 150,000 kilograms a day on average and employs more than 200 nearby residents in sorting and loading at peak times. The Mengyin fruit industry service center in Changping village integrates trading, sorting, processing and express logistics. Cold storage and cold-chain logistics allow peaches to be stored and sold at staggered times, easing pressure during peak harvest. The township has 232 e-commerce companies with annual sales exceeding 100 million yuan.
"We used to wait for buyers after the peaches ripened, and prices were squeezed very low. Now we set up livestreaming studios beside the orchards, picking and shipping on the spot so consumers can eat fresh Mengyin peaches the next day," said Zhao Zhengkai, head of Linyi Taohaoni Agricultural Development Co. With e-commerce platforms and cold-chain logistics, peaches reach customers nationwide within 48 hours.
The township has made Party organization-led cooperatives the mainstay of industry development, with 136 peach cooperatives, 19 of which are demonstration cooperatives at provincial, municipal or county level. In Changling village, Liu Gang, head of the Yuguo Seedling Planting Cooperative, has built a 100-mu breeding base for new peach varieties, introducing dozens of varieties each year for testing and selection. "We now ship more than 50,000 peach seedlings nationwide every day, up 20 percent from previous years," Liu said. Cooperative members earn an extra 1 yuan per seedling, and the operation provides work for more than 60 local laborers in grafting and livestreaming e-commerce, each earning 15 yuan per hour.
Song Bingzhe, a large grower in Xingshanzi village, once ran more than 100 mu of orchards with poor technical support and low returns. After attending field training courses offered by the township, he adopted scientific management, doubled his income and saw his family farm rated as a provincial demonstration farm. He then founded the Hongyan Fruit Service Team to help nearby farmers improve varieties and techniques.
Editor：韩蒙蒙