Minxian County in Gansu Province has prospered, grown wealthy, and gained worldwide fame because of medicinal herbs.
With a heritage of medicinal herbs stretching back a thousand years, this golden brand is now moving forward in new directions.
As the Chinese medicinal herb industry undergoes transformation and the market continues to upgrade in quality, how to convert abundant resource advantages into industrial advantages that enrich the people and strengthen the county is a development question that has long stood before this millennia-old herbal medicine hometown.
In recent years, Minxian County has anchored its positioning as the core zone of a national model area for the inheritance and innovative development of traditional Chinese medicine, a national standardized green medicinal herb source base, and a supply guarantee base for traditional Chinese medicine raw materials.
With angelica as the flagship, and in coordination with authentic medicinal herbs such as astragalus and codonopsis, the county has strengthened every link of the industry chain, focusing on germplasm protection, standardized cultivation, technological quality control, deep processing, and brand marketing.
By gathering the links into a chain, breaking through with the chain, and concentrating efforts on revitalization, the county's Chinese medicinal herb industry has leaped out of the old framework and found a new path forward.
Protecting the Seed Source: Treating Germplasm Protection as the "First Gate" of Industrial Development
In 2024, Minxian County launched a seed protection project, advancing it systematically around protecting seed sources, setting standards, establishing regulations, strengthening safeguards, and building clusters, blazing a path of independently controllable, green, efficient, standardized, and orderly breeding of Chinese medicinal herb seeds and seedlings.
In 2025, the county's breeding area for Chinese medicinal herb seeds and seedlings remained stable at over 79,000 mu, with more than 20,000 mu of intensive seedling breeding demonstration bases built, total output exceeding 62,000 tons, and an estimated total output value of 1.7 billion yuan.
The Chinese medicinal herb seed and seedling breeding base in Hetuo Town, Minxian County.
Three-dimensional circular seedling cultivation in greenhouses.
More than ten supporting plans, regulations, and technical standards have been rolled out one after another and formed into a system, drawing "hard benchmarks" for seedling trading and breeding.
Minxian County has joined forces with universities, research institutes, and business entities to tackle key problems, focusing on experiments in off-season facility seedling cultivation, seed pelletization, and germplasm resource preservation.
A cumulative investment of 56 million yuan has been made to build 3 standardized seed orchards and 8 seedling bases, forming a stable seedling supply system.
Annual supply reaches more than 45,000 tons of high-quality seedlings and 800 tons of high-quality seeds, with a superior seed coverage rate exceeding 95%, forming a breeding pattern of "government promotion, enterprise linkage, farmer action, and technical support."
One mu of seedlings can supply fifty mu for transplanting; the germination rate of seeds in greenhouses has risen to 92%; 79,000 mu of breeding bases are laid out in contiguous plots; smart greenhouses and seed processing workshops are put into supporting use; pelletized coating and three-dimensional circular seedling cultivation have been applied on the ground; and farmers are guided to independently and standardizedly retain seeds and grow seedlings...
The sowing stage of Chinese medicinal herbs is gradually achieving mechanization and precision seeding.
Standardizing Cultivation: Guarding Good Fields, Growing Good Herbs, and Selling at Good Prices
Relying on traditional experience for cultivation makes quality unstable, the market mixed, and good herbs unable to command stable good prices.
Minxian County's solution is the implementation of standards plus rigid supervision.
In 2025, the country's first national standard, "Technical Regulations for the Production of Authentic Medicinal Materials: Minxian Angelica," came into effect, and the "Regulations on the Protection and Development of the Angelica Industry in Minxian County, Dingxi City" was implemented simultaneously.
From cultivation to circulation, hard rules have been drawn for every link, and the long-standing "fire-seed" chaos that plagued the market has been rectified.
Medicinal herb farmers studying the "Regulations on the Protection and Development of the Angelica Industry in Minxian County, Dingxi City."
Healthy growing codonopsis plants.
The county has promoted the "six unified and one separate" green production model.
Cooperatives organize production, technical personnel go down to the fields, and seedling distribution, green prevention and control, water and fertilizer management, and harvesting and drying are carried out according to standards.
The county's Chinese medicinal herb planting area has remained stable at over 700,000 mu, with a green standardization rate of 88.7%, and 6 green standardized demonstration belts and 63 core demonstration bases of more than 500 mu each have been built.
More than 300,000 mu of medicinal herbs have been included in the traceability system, and the big data platform records the cultivation, harvesting, and flow information of every batch of medicinal herbs, making the entire process traceable.
The Minxian County Chinese medicinal herb traceability platform is measuring soil temperature and humidity.
"Every Chinese medicinal herb now has its own 'ID card,' and traced angelica sells for 20% above the market price," said Guo Zhiqiang, general manager of Gansu Minfeng Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
With limited land carrying capacity, Minxian County no longer relies solely on expanding planting area to increase output, but instead turns to technology to improve efficiency.
On the one hand, it rotates crops, improves soil, and restores fertility; on the other hand, it explores "enclave agriculture," organizing herb farmers to bring improved seeds and standardized technology to suitable surrounding areas for cultivation, expanding industrial space.
Standardized bases have radiated and driven more than 20,000 farming households, with some households increasing annual income by more than 30,000 yuan, and Chinese medicinal herb income accounting for more than 60% of farmers' per capita disposable income.
The enclave economy increases farmers' income.
Deepening Processing: No Longer a Raw Medicine "Transporter," Seeking Benefits from Deep Processing
The industry's development has been stuck at the processing link.
A large amount of medicinal herbs are simply sorted and then sold directly, with the deep processing link taking away most of the profits, while the risk of price fluctuations is borne by cultivating farmers.
Breaking free from the dilemma of "only selling raw medicine" is a hurdle that must be overcome for industrial upgrading.
East-West cooperation assistance funds have been directed toward processing shortcomings, and projects such as the traditional Chinese medicine incubation base and the GMP decoction piece park renovation have landed.
Support policies have been introduced to cultivate local enterprises, while investment has been attracted from the east, bringing in leaders such as Lijun Group and Zhonglu Pharmaceutical, and cultivating 7 billion-yuan-level processing enterprises such as Jiuzhou Tianrun and Yuguitang.
A total of 145 Chinese medicinal herb processing and marketing enterprises and 24 above-scale processing enterprises have been cultivated, completing an industrial output value of 2.38 billion yuan in 2025.
There is 1 traditional Chinese medicine preparation enterprise, 10 decoction piece processing enterprises, and 11 primary processing enterprises at production sites; more than 500 Chinese medicinal herb processing farmers' professional cooperatives and more than 13,000 individual processing households have been cultivated, and the processing conversion rate has risen to 40%.
This has realized the transformation of Chinese medicinal herb production from a raw material sales model to a value-added local processing model.
The Minxian County Traditional Chinese Medicine Industry Incubation Base.
A Chinese medicinal herb product packaging workshop.
Five industrial parks are laid out differently, guided by processing type, with complete water and electricity facilities.
The industry is layered to suit different entities: ordinary farmers do sorting, slicing, and other primary processing nearby; park enterprises produce standardized decoction pieces at scale; leading enterprises tackle deep development, laying out active ingredient extraction, traditional Chinese medicine preparations, medicinal meals, and daily chemical products.
Angelica concentrated pills, freeze-dried decoction pieces, medicinal meal packages, angelica skincare products, and organic angelica have successively entered the market, the supercritical extraction project for angelica oil is advancing in an orderly manner, and large health products are being launched one after another.
Xiao Xiangping, head of the Baizhigui Agricultural Science and Technology Farmers' Professional Cooperative in Minxian County, introduced: "This year the cooperative's sales have reached more than 6 million yuan, of which more than 200,000 packs of organic angelica nourishing material packages were sold, to Guangzhou, Fujian, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macao, driving an average household income increase of 12,000 yuan."
From selling raw materials to building an industry, from a single medicinal herb to standardized finished products, this is the shift in thinking of the Minxian angelica industry and also a reshaping of the entire industry chain.
Empowering Quality Control: Winning the Right to Speak with Data, Making Authentic Herbs More "Confident"
The competitiveness of authentic medicinal herbs is ultimately supported by stable and credible quality data.
In December 2025, the Inspection and Testing Center of the Minxian Angelica Research Institute received CNAS accreditation from the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment.
This was another major breakthrough in the field of technical standardization for Minxian's Chinese medicinal herb industry after obtaining CMA accreditation from China Metrology Accreditation in 2020.
Its testing reports are recognized in 116 countries and regions worldwide, opening up technical barriers to export and international markets and converting core active ingredients such as volatile oil and ferulic acid into quantified data to serve as the quality basis for trading and export.
Testing personnel are conducting tests on the active ingredients of Chinese medicinal herbs.
"It includes 140 testing parameters across 11 categories of Chinese medicinal herbs, mainly the 'Ten Major Long Medicines' such as angelica, astragalus, codonopsis, red astragalus, and licorice, with 22 new parameters added," introduced Ji Guiwen, director of the institute's quality testing office.
Laboratory results continue to sink down to the fields. Minxian County has established 1 wild angelica germplasm resource protection area, built more than 1,600 mu of wild Chinese medicinal herb protection and domestication bases, and planted more than 160 kinds of medicinal plants, including the "Ten Major Long Medicines," in a 30-mu germplasm resource nursery, collecting and preserving more than 120 kinds of germplasm resources.
At the same time, Minxian County has also created a local talent cultivation model called "Minxian Angelica Herb Workers," training local technicians who understand cultivation, can process, and are good at management, while simultaneously promoting green prevention and control, soil testing and formula fertilization, and unified pest and disease control in the fields, reducing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Testing, data, and standards run through the entire chain of breeding, seedling cultivation, and planting, putting authentic quality into practice.
The county's Chinese medicinal herb management system was selected as a national typical experience and recommended nationwide...
Strengthening Circulation: Based on Authenticity, Carrying the Brand Far
No matter how good the quality, if circulation is not smooth, the value cannot be realized.
Minxian County has built a "1+2+N" market system, with the core carrier being the China Angelica City 鈥?the largest and only professional origin market in China centered on angelica, and also the national angelica pricing and information distribution center.
Eighty percent of the country's angelica is traded here, with annual trading volume exceeding 300,000 tons and transaction value exceeding 34 billion yuan, attracting more than 5,000 resident merchants from inside and outside the province and more than 300 well-known pharmaceutical enterprises.
Townships such as Meichuan are equipped with specialized markets for seedlings and decoction pieces, making it convenient for herb farmers to trade nearby.
Workers checking products for external sale.
Offline, large-volume transactions are stabilized; online, incremental channels are opened.
The county has cultivated 102 Chinese medicinal herb e-commerce enterprises and 1,850 online stores, simultaneously advancing livestream selling, origin direct supply, and supermarket orders. The e-commerce transaction volume of Chinese medicinal herbs has exceeded 600 million yuan, ranking eighth nationwide and first in Gansu.
With simultaneous online and offline marketing, Minxian's authentic medicinal herbs are sold across the country and exported overseas.
Relying on expos, short videos, and livestreams to display the authentic attributes and medicinal-food homology value of Minxian angelica, the county has broken geographical sales limits and eased the difficulties farmers face in selling herbs and their weak bargaining position.
The 2026 Geographical Indication Industry (Guangzhou) Exhibition promotes Minxian organic angelica.
Minxian County continues to operate the "Minxian Angelica" geographical indication, relying on qualifications such as the national-level export food and agricultural product (angelica) quality and safety demonstration zone and the authentic medicinal herb protection and standardized planting demonstration base.
Minxian angelica was selected into the Top 100 Brand List of Chinese Geographical Indication Agricultural Products (Chinese Medicinal Herbs), ranking first in Gansu.
As the "14th Five-Year Plan" concludes, Minxian County was rated as a 2025 demonstration county for authentic medicinal herb development in rural revitalization, and Sigou Town was selected as a national strong town in agricultural industry.
In 2017, Minxian angelica production and processing techniques were selected into the fourth batch of representative projects of Gansu provincial intangible cultural heritage; in 2021, they were selected into the national intangible cultural heritage representative project list.
The ancient road has a new voice, and the fragrance of medicine lingers long.
Standing at the starting point of the "15th Five-Year Plan," Minxian County has launched a new round of Chinese medicinal herb industry upgrading projects, taking quality control as the core, promoting value-added development across the entire chain, accelerating the construction of an industrial cluster with clear division of labor and coordinated linkage, and continuing to deepen improved variety breeding, active ingredient extraction, health care product development, and brand matrix operations, striving toward the goal of becoming the core zone of a national model area for the inheritance and innovative development of traditional Chinese medicine, so that the millennia-old Minxian angelica can release greater people-enriching effectiveness on the new journey of rural revitalization.
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