Yang Jinyi (second from left), a technical instructor on kumquat cultivation, answers farmers' questions in Changlong village, Rong'an county, in May last year. QIN QINGHE/FOR CHINA DAILY

People see wider market for homegrown fruit as China encourages e-commerce in rural areas

Editor's note: With China set to meet its goal this year of eliminating extreme poverty before next year's 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, this series looks at the efforts of different areas of the country to erase poverty and improve livelihoods.

Lai Yuanyuan studied Thai language in Thailand for two years, and worked as a senior manager for a delivery company in South China's Guangdong province for a year.

After returning to Fule village in Rong'an, a county in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Lai decided she would not leave her village as she wanted to use e-commerce to "revitalize" it.

Farmers in Rong'an have been growing kumquat, which means "golden orange" in Chinese, for a living for more than 260 years. Fule villagers are no exception.

Lai saw an opportunity to make this bite-sized fruit－which is not much bigger than a grape but fills your mouth with a burst of sweet-tart citrus flavor－known to the outside world.

"When I was five, my cousins led me to get a kumquat from a villager who lived two hills away from my home. I was surprised the fruit was so sweet. I still remember that taste today. As an adult, I've wondered why our kumquat is unknown to the outside world," says Lai.

In 2013, Lai opened her first online kumquat store, which made a stir immediately. It was followed by the local government's support for growing the fruit as well as opening virtual stores.

"Because of a poor business model, the fruit couldn't help people make ends meet," Lai, who is in her 30s, said. "When I came back in 2013, the villagers were all cutting down the kumquat trees and thinking about planting other things."

Lai's online store let the villagers see a market outside of Fule. So they started to grow kumquat again.

In 2014 and 2015, China's policy to encourage e-commerce in all counties and villages paid dividends. The price of the local kumquat rose from 4 yuan (58 cents) per kilo to 40 yuan.

A view of the kumquat field in Fule village in Rong'an, a county in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, in December. QIN QINGHE/FOR CHINA DAILY

Lucrative business

Fule village has grown into a kumquat kingdom. The lucrative business has seen young people coming back to the village to grow and sell the fruit. The so-called "kumquat industry" has now turned into a main driver of Rong'an's economy.

So far, more than 20,000 villagers have been lifted out of poverty through the growing and selling of kumquat, which we now call the "fruit of fortune", said Chen Hong, Party secretary of Rong'an county.

Lai is planning to sell Rong'an kumquat in Southeast Asia.

In China, most of the impoverished people are farmers. As part of the "targeted poverty alleviation", the anti-poverty campaign conceived by President and CPC Central Committee General Secretary Xi Jinping, the plant protection station of Rong'an County Agricultural Bureau launched the farmer field schools in 2013.

The FFS program, an agricultural production-based training and farmer education tool, has shown to play a vital role in poverty reduction among poor smallholder farmers.

In 2017, the station established the Integrated Pest Management Farmer Field School of China and FAO(Food and Agriculture Organization) Pesticide Risk Reduction Program targeting local farmers.

After receiving extensive IPM FFS training on field observations, plant growth maps, agroecological system analysis and insect zoos, farmers in Rong'an significantly improved both their agricultural practices and profits.

The FFS training is based on participatory discussion, which strengthens farmers' independent decision-making capacity. The training sessions enabled them to make the right decisions in different situations, balancing profits and risks.

As a result, using their market knowledge and intensified crop production, farmers significantly increased their profits.

Some of the best trainees have become key experts in the village. Some trainees have become facilitators, village officials and poverty reduction leaders by participating in the interactive training.

Yang Jinyi, chairman of Bide Agriculture Co in Rong'an county, is one of the examples of a farmer who has turned expert in growing kumquat. He was part of the first group of trainees at the FFS in 2013.

"I visit orchards in the village for 20 days in a month, talking with farmers about the issues they have in growing kumquat," Yang said.

Yang's company has grown 200 hectares of kumquat, hiring more than 700 local farmers. The company offers them free training and technical support.

The impoverished farmers can also get things such as fertilizer and pesticide from the company. They are allowed to pay back after they sell their kumquat.

Chen Wenge, head of Rong'an's plant protection station, said: "Our FFS program offers lessons that cater to the needs of local farmers and encourage them to reduce the use of fertilizer, pesticide and insecticide."

"Some of the kumquat brands the village produces have received the certificates issued by Hong Kong Standards and Testing Centre, making Hong Kong and even other international markets accessible for their fruit," Chen added.

Women belonging to local minority ethnic groups showcase Rong'an kumquat in November. QIN QINGHE/FOR CHINA DAILY

Yield improves

Chen said with the development of the local farmer field schools, more and more farmers improved their technical knowledge in agriculture. The yield of kumquat has also improved significantly, with a higher proportion of high-quality fruits.

"The output per 140 hectares among trainees has increased by 500 kg, an increase of 40 percent. Their direct profit has reached 44.5 yuan per hectare, compared with non-trainees' profit of 21.7 yuan, meaning trainees earned 105.3 percent more," Chen said.

By the end of 2019, Rong'an county had grown 11,133 hectares of kumquat and harvested 150,000 tons of the "golden orange", with an output value of 1.5 billion yuan. A slightly more than 54 percent of the county's poverty-stricken families, or 8,781 people, planted 2,342 hectares of kumquat.

The success of the farmer field schools in Rong'an qualified them to be included among the "100 Best Cases" in the Global Solicitation and Challenge Prize on Best Poverty Reduction Practices, where officials from the World Bank, the International Poverty Reduction Center in China, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and many more organizations discussed and chose the best poverty reduction case studies.

The popularity of FFS in Rong'an has won the county a lot of admirers home and abroad. Indonesia is one of them.

Sukajaya village in Indonesia's West Java province is home to more than 6,000 people, and the villagers rely primarily on rice farming for their livelihood.

But after attending a two-week farmer field school in Rong'an, Sukajaya village chief Deden Gunaefi decided to encourage the villagers to go beyond rice farming. They planted fruits and vegetables, wove baskets, and started developing their village into an agritourism site.

"What I learned from the workshop in China is that you can alleviate poverty by developing agriculture and rural industries," Gunaefi said.

He said that since he began implementing new projects in late 2019, village residents have reported their incomes have increased－they can now sell more products through village-owned enterprises.

Gunaefi is one of 26 Indonesian village officials who was sent to Guangxi last September to learn how to lift the standard of living in their villages. Eight of those officials were village chiefs.

He said he attended discussions on using farm technology to boost farm production, mariculture－the specialized cultivation of fish or other marine life for food－and rural entrepreneurship.

"It is an honor to have visited China, because of the lessons I learned and how I implemented them in my village," said Gunaefi, who is now more aware of how agriculture and rural industries can alleviate poverty. Indeed, he is thankful that innovation has transformed farming activities locally.

Setting example

Abdul Halim Iskandar, Indonesia's minister for villages, development of disadvantaged regions, and transmigration, said this was the first time the country had sent a group of village officials to China to learn about poverty alleviation. A second group will be attending the same program as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

Iskandar said Indonesia has a lot to learn from the world's second-largest economy and its success in reducing poverty. China's reform and opening-up policies have lifted nearly 800 million Chinese people out of poverty in the past 40 years.

Indonesia, with over 267 million people, is the world's fourth-largest country in terms of population.

Iskandar said China can help fulfill Indonesian President Joko Widodo's goal of strengthening human resources, expanding the rural economy through village-owned enterprises and reducing rural poverty.

According to latest data from Indonesia's Central Statistics Agency, more than 9 percent of the Southeast Asian country's total population lives below the poverty line. There are nearly 25 million Indonesians who subsist on less than $2 a day.

The incidence of poverty is higher in rural areas, where 12.6 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. In urban areas, the figure is over 6 percent.

Widodo, who was reelected in 2019, has promised to increase the funds extended to over 70,000 villages across Indonesia to boost the rural economy. From 2015 to 2019, Widodo's administration disbursed $17.7 billion in village funds, according to a report by the Jakarta Post.

Looking ahead, Iskandar, whose ministry is responsible for the country's thousands of villages, is hoping there will be more collaboration between China and Indonesia. Developing the rural economy "is a big responsibility for our ministry", he said.

Meanwhile, Gunaefi, head of Sukajaya village, hopes the pandemic will end soon, "so that we can get back to our normal activities".