A total of 22,800 mu (1,520 hectares) of sugar oranges in Jinchengjiang district, Hechi, has recently entered harvest season, and due to the excellent quality and good reputation, merchants from Jiangxi, Ningxia, Chongqing, Hebei, Shandong, and other places flock to Hechi to purchase.

The professional cooperative of mandarin orange planting in Liujia town has invested 10.6 million yuan ($1.48 million) in funding the core base of sugar orange planting since 2014. It now covers 500 mu and produces nearly 2,000 metric tons annually.

A "cooperative + base + farmer" model is used to increase the benefits of local farmers. In the past three years, 220 local households have earned an income of 750,000 yuan from land rent and 3 million yuan from jobs.

"This year's sugar oranges are of superior quality. The first batch of acquisition price was 6.4 yuan per kilogram. Now, it has fallen back to 5.2 yuan per kg. So the market expectation is better than the previous year," said Yan Guojian, a Jiangxi province buyer who has been buying sugar oranges here for three consecutive years.

Many advanced agricultural technologies and production models were introduced through the construction demonstration area, promoting the large-scale development of characteristic industries such as sugar oranges, according to officials from the Jinchengjiang bureau of agriculture and rural affairs.

Farmers select sugar oranges. [Photo provided to guangxi.chinadaily.com.cn/hechi]