Haimen, a county-level city in Nantong, has been working to transform and upgrade its agricultural industry in recent years, boosting rural development and increasing living standards for farmers.

The city has been promoting the application of high-end intelligent agricultural equipment since the beginning of this year, and aims to develop two fully automated grain farms in 2020 with the help of advanced information technology.

A modern fruit and vegetable production center covering an area of 5,000 mu (333.5 hectares) will also be built to accelerate the transition from natural production to controlled production through the use of technological equipment.

In addition, a series of subsidies are being offered to encourage farmers to mechanize agricultural production. For example, a newly-build standard sprout cultivation plant that can produce seedlings for an area of at least 1,000 mu is eligible to receive 150,000 yuan ($21,735) in subsidies, and a grain drying center recently built by a village-level cooperative is eligible for a 300,000-yuan subsidy for every four grain dryers with capacities of at least 12 tons.

In order to diversify the agricultural industry, the local government has also been working to attract more investment. A total of 10 agricultural industrial projects, each costing more than 1 billion yuan, are expected to be completed by the end of 2020, including two food processing plants, which are expected to start operating this year.

Two agricultural tourist routes respectively focusing on natural scenery and science education have also been developed. They attracted 2.63 million tourists from Shanghai in 2019.