Following a gentle rain in May, a verdant navel orange orchard sprawls across a hillside, its branches laden with green fruit larger than pigeon eggs. Liao Bingying, an orchardist in Yangma Village, Datangbu Town, Xinfeng County, Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, gestures towards his grove. He has leased 130 mu of land to cultivate these oranges, confident this venture will propel his family from modest comfort to greater prosperity.
Over ninety years ago, the Red Army's Long March passed through a Xinfeng of barren hills and poor soil, where locals struggled to subsist on sparse farming. Today, that same route is lined with golden orchards, the once-desolate slopes transformed into "green mountains of gold and silver."
Each year in mid-to-late November, NONGFU SPRING Fruit Industry Company, located in Xinfeng County's high-tech zone, purchases fresh fruit from growers like Liao. In 2024 alone, NONGFU SPRING harvested 157,000 tons of navel oranges across Ganzhou, with Xinfeng serving as a crucial fresh fruit base. Data shows the county's navel orange cultivation area reached 285,000 mu in 2025, with an annual output of 286,000 tons and a total cluster output value of 7 billion yuan.
Beyond fresh sales, local enterprises like Zhengda Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. and Xinming Technology Development Co., Ltd. leverage e-commerce platforms and value-added processing. They produce navel orange cakes, wine, and tea, creating a complete industrial loop from large-scale planting and standardized primary processing to high-value deep processing.
As Liu Jingming, a local Xinfeng writer, reflects in the preface to his reportage "The Running Orange," the bond between southern Jiangxi and the navel orange is profound. The journey of this "sweet enterprise" has been one of discovery, offering insights that extend far beyond the fruit itself. The landscape along the Tao River remains green, but it is now organically integrated with a "hundred-mile navel orange belt," embodying a spirit of constant renewal.
Rooting the Orchard: Transforming Barren Hills into a "Golden Garden of Prosperity"
The story began in the winter of 1970 when Yuan Shougen introduced and transplanted seedlings, successfully cultivating 156 navel orange saplings the following spring in what is now Anxi Town. He likely never imagined Xinfeng would become a core production area for Gannan navel oranges. The region's unique hilly climate and red soil nurture the premium Newhall variety, known for its tender texture, juiciness, and sweetness.
Liao Bingying, formerly a chicken farmer, seized an opportunity to take over a 130-mu orchard. "I've been cultivating for five years now, with over 4,000 trees. Last year's harvest was 310,000 jin," he says happily. His crop finds ready buyers: 300,000 jin went to NONGFU SPRING, with the remainder used for rent payments, personal sales, or gifts.
A migrant from Hubei province reports that he and relatives leased 120 mu locally several years ago, now yielding 400,000 jin annually. "Our family has firmly established a foundation for prosperity," he states.
Orchard management is a collaborative effort. NONGFU SPRING provides technical guidance on fertilization and pest control to ensure quality, while the county's Fruit Industry Development Service Center offers technical support. Furthermore, Xinfeng has developed a locally savvy rental model where fruit substitutes for cash. For Liao's orchard, the third-year rent was 5,000 jin of oranges, increasing to 10,000 jin in the fourth year, and stabilizing at 20,000 jin annually during peak production. This flexible system aligns with tree growth, easing financial pressure in early years and encouraging farmers to develop contiguous tracts of barren hills.
To strengthen the industry, Xinfeng County has, since 2017, allocated special annual funds from its budget. This has supported the development of 452 ecological demonstration orchards covering nearly 50,000 mu. The county has also established a "Dual Academician" expert workstation, a Sino-US joint lab for citrus greening disease, and a National Navel Orange Engineering Technology Research Center. Furthering industry-education integration, Xinfeng welcomed the Gannan Normal University Navel Orange Industry College, whose first graduates are now contributing to the local sector.
Planting confidence stems from scientific management and dual-standard control. Many large-scale growers operate their own organic fertilizer plants, using chicken manure, fruit pits, and seed cakes. Liao Bingying does this, selling surplus fertilizer to other growers for added income. This soil enrichment directly boosts sugar content, with orchard Brix levels consistently reaching 15-16 degrees, earning farmers a quality bonus of 0.2 yuan per jin.
Changgang Village in Datangbu Town is a nationally recognized "One Village, One Product (Navel Orange) Demonstration Village" and a provincial "Top 100 Beautiful Village." All 169 households grow oranges on 4,103.7 mu, averaging 7.1 mu per household. Partnering with Zhengda Agriculture, the village employs a "cooperative + base + farmer" integrated model, operating five standardized orchards. The navel orange industry's output value of 43.387 million yuan constitutes 73.6% of the village's economy. As village cadres explain, locals no longer need to migrate for work; stable employment and an average annual income increase of around 30,000 yuan are found right at their doorstep.
Extending the Chain: An Orange's Complete Transformation into "Gold"
The first stop for fresh oranges is NONGFU SPRING's deep-processing division. Leveraging the region's superior produce, the company invested over 2 billion yuan since its 2015 arrival, building facilities including a 200,000-ton fresh fruit sorting and juicing line and a 200-million-bottle sterile beverage filling line. Through products like 17.5° fresh oranges and 100% NFC orange juice, it transforms field fruit into bottled drinks for nationwide distribution.
A NONGFU SPRING executive notes the company uses a "company + base + farmer" model, signing annual contracts, providing technical guidance and quality inspection to ensure stable farmer income regardless of harvest size. The local government praises the company as a "market bellwether" that supports and stabilizes the industry.
Meanwhile, Wang Ji, a villager in Dongpu Village, Xiniu Town, gets busy every October. Shifting from vegetable wholesale to navel orange e-commerce, the 1992-born entrepreneur primarily uses social networks rather than major platforms, selling 300,000 jin last season through collaborative networks with other young people.
For Xiao Bo, founder and chairman of Zhengda Agriculture, the focus is expanding beyond fresh fruit sales into deep processing. Last year, his e-commerce platform sold over 60 million yuan in fresh fruit and over 10 million yuan in processed products. His goal is for processed goods to sustainably outpace fresh sales. Starting from e-commerce with no base, Zhengda now owns 2,087 mu of standardized orchards and collaborates with 882 farming households, including 43 formerly impoverished families, securing a raw material supply chain. The company explores the orange's full value, developing four product lines: dried peel, tea beverages, fruit wine, and enzymes. Peel is stored under controlled conditions—with over 20 tons in stock by end-2025—for natural aging into products like dried peel strips and tea balls compatible with various teas. Targeting younger consumers, it offers portable罐装 tea. Using full fermentation, it produces a 12° low-alcohol fruit wine for female and niche nightlife markets. Its products are sold domestically and exported to South Korea, prompting a second-phase expansion set for operation this October.
Xinming Technology engages in even broader agricultural product development. An executive notes the company operates a 1,000-mu base in Anxi Town and partners with over 200 fruit farmers to supply fresh fruit to major cities nationwide. It has developed a range of derivative products—preserved fruit, pastries, essential oil, snacks, and wine—turning waste peel and pits into treasure and forging a comprehensive industrial ecosystem.
From a single household's orchard to a thriving industry for thousands, from barren land to golden groves, from selling fresh fruit alone to adding value across the entire chain, Xinfeng's navel orange industry has sprinted forward. It demonstrates the confidence of standardized cultivation, the resilience of full-chain processing, and the warmth of bringing prosperity to farmers. This small fruit is not just Xinfeng's geographical signature but a vibrant, living model of rural revitalization in action.
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