Joint operations and off-season sales are driving the apple industry upgrade in Xifeng District, promoting increased income for farmers. Workers at the Qingyang Chunmanyuan Planting and Breeding Farmers' Professional Cooperative are busy packing apples. The scene is captured in a photo provided by correspondent Wang Chunyan.
During the cold winter, while the fields of the Loess Plateau remain quiet, a warm and bustling atmosphere fills the Qingyang Chunmanyuan Planting and Breeding Farmers' Professional Cooperative in Gouquan Village, Houguanzhai Town, Xifeng District. Dozens of villagers gather around mountains of apples, swiftly sorting and packaging them. This batch of carefully handled fruit is about to head south, embarking on a strategic "off-season sales" journey.
"Our apples are placed directly into cold storage after the autumn harvest; they maintain excellent appearance and superb taste. They are particularly sought-after when brought to market now, commanding a significantly higher price compared to the harvest season," explained Zhang Fenqin, a staff member of the cooperative. This business strategy, which capitalizes on a "time difference" for apples, is shifting from "selling immediately after harvest" to "preserving freshness for the market," and is yielding substantial results on this yellow earth.
Gouquan Village is a specialized apple-producing village in Xifeng District. Leveraging a large-scale planting base of over 2,000 acres, it has built a modern apple industry system integrating production, storage, and sales. In recent years, the village has innovatively implemented a "joint cooperative + cooperatives + farmers" development model. This integrates resources from six fruit industry professional cooperatives to form a joint fruit farmers' cooperative, providing members with full-chain services including technical guidance, quality control, and brand marketing.
This innovative mechanism has broken through the limitations of previous individual efforts, upgrading the apple industry from a "solo performance by cooperatives" to a "village-wide chorus." By unifying production standards, sharing cold chain facilities, and jointly building sales channels, it drives the industry's transformation towards scientific, modern, and large-scale operations. Currently, the booming apple industry not only provides generous returns for fruit farmers but also creates numerous job opportunities in sorting, packaging, and transportation. This opens a stable income-increasing path of "employment close to home" for surrounding villagers, achieving a win-win situation for industrial development and mass income growth.
Out-of-town merchant Cao Yingying is purchasing here for the seventh consecutive year. "The apples from Gouquan Village have good appearance, large size, and a crisp, sweet taste, making them especially popular in the Nanning market in Guangxi. This trip will take away four or five truckloads, approximately 100,000 jin (50,000 kilograms)," she said.
In recent years, Xifeng District has vigorously promoted the new "off-season sales" model. Through policy guidance and financial support, it encourages cooperatives and fruit farmers to build cold storage and preservation facilities and expand diverse sales channels. This initiative allows local apples to break through the traditional sales cycle, precisely meet market demand, and achieve a leap from "seasonal sales" to "year-round supply." The cold chain system not only locks in the fresh quality of the apples but also extends the industrial chain and enhances the value chain.
In Xifeng District, cold storage facilities have become "converters" for industrial upgrading. They turn the idle winter season into a busy period, enabling high quality to command premium prices, and forming a virtuous development pattern of "annual sales of seasonal production, off-season supply, and balanced market availability." This increasingly broad path of industrial revitalization is injecting a continuous and powerful driving force into the rural revitalization of Xifeng District.
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