The sun sets gently over a tranquil scene of paddy fields and water in Xinghua. [Photo/Xuexi Qiangguo app]
Xinghua city – located in East China's Jiangsu province – has formed a complete industry supply chain in agriculture, by integrating the development of production, processing and sales.
The city has abundant in agricultural resources and it has formed five major industry supply chains for rice, river crabs, fruit and vegetables, freshwater fish and crayfish.
To boost agricultural production, Xinghua has adopted industrialized thinking to develop a modern sector. It has introduced large-scale planting and breeding bases through "enterprise + base" or "enterprise + family farm" configurations.
Furthermore, by taking the adding of value to its produce as its main direction, Xinghua has realized the cluster development of deep food processing.
More than 300 enterprises have settled in the health foods industrial park in the Xinghua Economic Development Zone – processing dehydrated vegetables, rice and noodles, condiments, hot pot food and seafood products, among others.
The total investment value of the food processing industry in the Xinghua EDZ has topped over 20 billion yuan ($2.94 billion) and the value of the industry scale has reached 30 billion yuan.
Xinghua, located in the central area of the Lixia River, has cultivated a unique water and farming culture, which benefits the local agricultural tourism sector a great deal.
It has developed leisure and sightseeing, family entertainment, art and aesthetic education and other forms of tourism – generating annual operating earnings of nearly 2.5 billion yuan.