A spring breeze sweeps across Longdong, heralding a new beginning on its fertile fields as an unprecedented campaign to advance modern agriculture gets underway. This year, Qingyang City has set its sights on becoming a provincial demonstration zone for modern agriculture, vigorously implementing the "568" strategy for breakthroughs in agricultural development. The initiative is powered by five key drivers: new varieties, new technologies, new models, new mechanisms, and a new generation of farmers. It synergistically promotes six dimensions of development: scale, integration, branding, convergence, sustainability, and smart technology. The city is concentrating efforts on building eight 10-billion-yuan industrial clusters covering apples, mutton sheep, broiler chickens, beef cattle, Chinese medicinal herbs, vegetables and edible fungi, swine, and sea buckthorn forest fruits, aiming to expand the scale, improve quality, extend value chains, and boost efficiency of modern cold–dryland agriculture.
Economic data for the agricultural sector in the first quarter is impressive. The primary industry's added value is projected to reach 1.562 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.5%. Per capita disposable income for rural residents reached 4,570 yuan, growing by 7.5%, marking a strong start to the year for modern agricultural advancement.
Focusing on building the eight 10-billion-yuan industrial clusters, Qingyang has adopted a market-oriented approach, implementing actions to expand volume, improve quality, extend chains, and increase efficiency in its characteristic industries. The city is deploying a comprehensive set of measures covering industrial scale, cultivation of market entities, deep processing, and production-marketing linkages, leading to a trend of cluster-based, fully integrated industrial development.
In the vegetable greenhouses of Zhengyang Agriculture in Zhongcun Town, Ning County, tomatoes, peppers, cabbages, and cauliflowers are thriving. The first batch of vegetables is expected to hit the market by the end of April, supplying surrounding areas directly. By transferring 36 mu of land, the town has built 11 steel-frame solar greenhouses. Large-scale vegetable cultivation not only injects vitality into the village collective economy but also creates local employment and increases incomes for residents.
"Protected vegetables, orchard fruits, melons, and animal husbandry were key growth drivers in the first quarter," said a relevant official from the Qingyang Municipal Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The city continues to expand the scale of both protected and open-field vegetable production and has started early seedling cultivation and transplanting of melons in spring greenhouses. According to reports, the output of vegetables, melons, and orchard fruits citywide in the first quarter is estimated to reach 26,400 tons, 889.3 tons, and 187.4 tons, respectively. Furthermore, with increased subsidies for breeding stock, introduction of stud sheep, and construction of livestock shelters, the animal husbandry sector shows strong growth momentum. The number of cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry slaughtered in the first quarter is projected to reach 72,200 head, 799,200 head, 216,400 head, and 21.9633 million head, respectively.
The formation of industrial clusters relies not only on the leading role of key enterprises but also on the deep forging of industrial chains. This year, Qingyang has actively nurtured and expanded various new types of agricultural business entities, supporting local chain-leading enterprises such as Shengyue, Weihe, Zhongsheng, and Juli to grow stronger. The city has allocated 162 million yuan in regular assistance funds to support the construction of deep processing projects for apples, beef cattle, mutton sheep, broiler chickens, medicinal herbs, and sea buckthorn. Focusing on the two core brands, "Qingyang Apple" and "Huan County Lamb," the city is implementing a "big single product breakthrough" strategy for the Ruixue apple variety. To date, 31 agricultural product processing lines have been built citywide, achieving a processing conversion rate of 65%. Through enterprise leadership, project support, and brand breakthroughs, the agricultural industry is transitioning from "scale expansion" to "value enhancement."
Advancing modern agriculture requires both the "hard support" of projects and the "soft power" of digital intelligence. Qingyang adheres to a dual-drive approach of project牵引 and digital empowerment, using major projects to solidify the industrial foundation and digital technologies to enable agricultural transformation. Seizing policy opportunities such as ultra-long-term special government bonds and central budget investments, the city has planned and reserved 262 major agricultural and rural projects for the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, with a total investment of 49 billion yuan, centered around the eight industrial clusters. It has secured six central budget investment projects totaling 723 million yuan and obtained 454 million yuan in ultra-long-term bond funds to support the construction of 280,000 mu of high-standard farmland in Huan County, Ning County, and Zhenyuan County. Ongoing projects, including high-standard farmland construction, industrial park development, and lottery public welfare fund projects, have all resumed or commenced construction, laying a solid foundation for industrial development throughout the year.
Digital technology is injecting new quality productive forces into traditional agriculture. Leveraging the national integrated computing power network hub node and the "East Data, West Computing" project, Qingyang is accelerating the development of "AI + agriculture," striving to build digital intelligence platforms, and shifting agricultural development from reliance on weather to mastery through technology. The "Digital Intelligence Qingnong" app has been developed, integrating agricultural data from the city and county levels, enabling one-click data retrieval and analysis. It provides free services to the public, including market prices, agricultural techniques, online services, policy support, weather information, and data queries. Application scenarios such as low-altitude economy, smart agricultural machinery, AI pest and disease identification, and satellite remote sensing for loss assessment are being expanded. An agricultural industry cloud platform is under construction, promoting the digital and intelligent transformation and upgrade of 36 agricultural enterprises in the city. The Qingyang Apple Big Data Center has been established, featuring 301 functional modules that enable visual monitoring, intelligent decision-making, and integrated scheduling of orchards, marking a step towards smart agriculture for the apple industry.
A strong industry begins with strong seeds. Qingyang focuses on the four major sectors of fruits, livestock, grains, and medicinal herbs, aiming to strengthen the "chips" of its agriculture. For the "apple chip," the city actively collaborates with institutions like Northwest A&F University to promote high-end varieties such as the "Sanrui" series. Efforts are underway to establish a national apple experiment station and the Gannon University Qingyang Apple Experiment Station, aiming to make the region a core area for breeding and promoting new superior apple varieties nationwide. Currently, the city has built 200,000 mu of high-efficiency production bases for new varieties, represented by "Ruixue," with the commercial fruit rate and high-quality fruit rate increasing to 86% and 75%, respectively.
Significant achievements have also been made in developing the "livestock chip." Relying on the Yazhouwan National Laboratory, Qingyang is accelerating the construction of a mutton sheep bio-breeding trial base and speeding up the selection and approval of the new "Zhonghuan Mutton Sheep" breed. Concurrently, conservation and utilization of germplasm resources for local优良 breeds such as Zaosheng cattle and Longdong black goats are underway. The city is now home to two national-level core sheep breeding farms.
To ensure food security and strengthen the "grain and oil chip," Qingyang has implemented a series of projects, including promoting new corn varieties in Zhenyuan County and building a grain and oil new variety trial base in Huan County. Emphasis is placed on breeding and promoting main grain and oil crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans. Five vegetable original species and cultivated species, along with 12 new corn and soybean varieties, have been successfully bred, resulting in five technology transfers. Among them, the independently bred soybean variety "Qingkedou No. 8" has passed provincial approval.
In the field of the "authentic medicinal herb chip," Qingyang focuses on local优势 medicinal herb varieties, conducting purification, rejuvenation, and breeding of improved seeds. It is actively exploring large-scale, standardized models for breeding superior varieties to enhance the purity, yield, and quality of medicinal herbs, providing solid seed source support for the sustainable development of the city's one-million-mu medicinal herb industry.
With the deepening implementation of the "568" strategy, Qingyang's strides in modern agricultural advancement are firm and powerful. From scale expansion to entity cultivation, from processing and value addition to brand building, and from seed industry breakthroughs to digital empowerment, Qingyang is constructing a new pattern for modern agricultural development with systematic thinking, achieving a value leap from the field to the dining table.
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