Rudong, a county in Nantong, Jiangsu province, has striven to upgrade the integrative development of rural industries, building a model industrial park in its high-tech zone. 

Built based on two provincial-level agricultural product processing parks and one entrepreneurship park for farmers, the industrial park features a “1+3” layout. The figure “1” refers to a key area while “3” stands for two production areas for quality rice, fruit and vegetable and a processing area for agricultural products. The park aims to become a reproducible model for the integrative development of rural industries, blending farmers’ entrepreneurship, transfer and industrialization of modern agriculture technologies, and industrial integration.

Early this year, the park, together with 147 other units, was approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Land and Resources as one of the first national demonstration parks for integrative development of rural industries.

The park now has attracted eight leading agriculture companies, seven professional cooperatives and eight family farms. A total of 20 projects are under construction, most of which will be finished in 2018. The project investment is expected to reach 160 million yuan ($23.96 million).

To pass the acceptance check at the end of the year, the high-tech zone has input more than 60 million yuan to construct infrastructure such as roads and channels. The business entities including family farms and cooperatives have built 5,200-square-meter processing areas and 4,350-square-meter cold storage areas, while the leading agriculture companies have constructed cold rooms with storage capacity of 50,000 tons and agriculture product processing workshops with total area of 15,000 square meters.

Meanwhile, Rudong county is pushing forward pilot projects on integrated development of primary, secondary and tertiary industries, as well as on primary processing of agricultural products, which both have provincial approval.