Currently, the flat peach orchards in Taoyuan New Village, Maoding Town, Luodian County, are enjoying a bountiful harvest season, with fresh fruit gradually reaching the market. Within the orchards, peach trees are lush and full, with plump, golden flat peaches weighing down the branches. Farmers move through the groves, busily picking, sorting, packing into crates, and loading vehicles. The fields and village collection points are bustling scenes of a productive harvest. The humble golden flat peach has become a "golden fruit" driving increased income for local villagers and boosting the development of the rural industry.
In recent days, farmers have been capitalizing on the clear weather to carefully harvest the ripe flat peaches, meticulously sorting them by grade and packing them into boxes to ensure each piece of fruit is of excellent quality and fresh. A dual sales model leveraging both online and offline channels has allowed these high-quality peaches to travel beyond the remote mountains and find a ready market, effectively solving the farmers' sales challenges.
"We promote our peaches through short videos and WeChat platforms, mobilizing our WeChat groups and social circles to find buyers. At the same time, the town's agricultural support live-streaming team actively helps us connect with sales channels and arrange live-streaming sales. This allows everyone to farm with confidence and sell with ease, truly turning our harvest into income," said farmer Peng Mingsheng.
"Our flat peaches are unique to Luodian—crisp and sweet, a taste you can't find elsewhere. This year, my family planted 5 mu (about 0.33 hectares), with 40 trees per mu, each producing over 40 jin (about 20 kilograms). They sell well in the market at 10 to 15 yuan per jin," said Taoyuan New Village farmer Luo Jialing, her joy evident as she surveyed the abundant harvest in her orchard.
Taoyuan New Village is located in the northeastern part of Maoding Town, characterized by relatively high altitude, significant diurnal temperature variation, ample sunlight, average annual precipitation of 1200 to 1400 millimeters, and an average annual temperature of 19.6°C. These exceptional growing conditions produce fruit with an excellent flavor profile. In 2019, Taoyuan New Village began trial planting of flat peach varieties. Following successful cultivation, the practice was promoted throughout the village. Through years of technical refinement and continuous optimization of variety selection, the current flat peach cultivation area has expanded to over 80 mu.
Presently, the total orchard area in Taoyuan New Village, Maoding Town, exceeds 3600 mu, comprising over 2300 mu of peaches, over 800 mu of loquats, and over 500 mu of honey-sweet plums, forming a diversified and distinctive planting structure.
In recent years, Maoding Town has leveraged its local agricultural resource advantages to develop a characteristic fruit cultivation industry tailored to local conditions. It has prioritized orchard cultivation as a key specialty industry, continuously optimizing varieties, strengthening technical guidance, and broadening sales channels to promote the scaled and standardized development of the peach industry. Currently, the first batch of April peaches for this year has been successfully sold. The flat peach season is now in full swing, while July peaches, September peaches, and October peaches are all in their growth stages, developing steadily with a promising harvest ahead. These will be brought to market in successive batches, establishing an industrial model that ensures peaches are available across seasons, with harvests throughout the year.
The transformation of Taoyuan New Village from a once impoverished area to today's "thousand-mu peach village" is a vivid example of Maoding Town's deep cultivation in its characteristic agricultural development of "one fishery, two teas, three vegetables, and five fruits." Looking ahead, Maoding Town will continue to focus on developing "premium fruits" by enhancing technical guidance and expanding sales channels, allowing more people to taste the "sweet fruits" of Maoding Town and making the premium fruit industry an "engine for increasing income" for the local populace.
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