Largest nursery, largest orchard

In 1997 the county of Zhongxian suffered still from an unbalanced structure between industry and agriculture, its poverty-stricken tax base facing the onerous expense and task of relocation. The local revenue in 1997 only reached RMB 100 million, and the per capita net income of farmers was only RMB 1,456. The county seat of Zhongxian is 180 kilometers from downtown Chongqing Municipality. It took 12 hours to make the journey by car in those days, whereas the expressway has brought that down to two hours or so.

In the beginning, the leaders of Zhongxian County were not sure whether it made sense to encourage relocated farmers to plant orange groves. Modern, scalable and intensified production applied to agriculture clashed fiercely with the traditional mode of a dispersed, household-based operation. Nevertheless, following the introduction of the Beijing Huiyuan Group and American Bronfman Citrus Co., Ltd. into Zhongxian, fresh juice shipped to large cities fetched a high price of RMB32 per box. Seeing the high profit, farmers fell over one another applying for citrus licenses and expanded rapidly.

"Zhongxian County has a special environment. Any development strategy should take into consideration the Three Gorges Reservoir," said Zhu Xiyan, secretary of the CPC Zhongxian County Committee. "We often talk about the Western Development Drive. It involves two aspects: tangible and intangible. The latter refers to the exploration of our minds," Zhu added. Leaders of Zhongxian County put forward the creative idea of "building a city shaded by citrus groves" making the humble orange the mascot of the county, much as it is in the state of Florida.

"Every part of an orange yields treasure," said Zhu Xiyan, "even its skin is a material for abstracting essence." Magistrate Liu Guizhong reveals that since the implementation of the Western Development Strategy, the county has introduced leading enterprises. Citrus trees grow on land below the line of 600 meters above sea level. On the land above the line of 600 meters, they plant tea-oil trees.

The lifestyle impresses almost as much as the hard statistics. "The income from growing citrus ten times that from growing grain crops. Since farm work is not heavy, many young and middle-aged farmers can go out to work elsewhere," said Yang Renbin, secretary of the CPC Tujing Township Committee of Zhongxian County. At this easy pace, Zhongxian's annual processing capacity of citrus exceeds 100,000 tons. More than 13,000 hectares of citrus orchards have been planted and cultivated, benefiting 150,000 fruit-growing farmers and more than 10,000 people relocated from the reservoir area. Citrus trees around the county seat have formed the largest citrus orchard in the reservoir area. The largest industrialized container seedling nursery in the world with an annual production capacity of 2.5 million seedlings has been built.

The lifeblood of Zhongxian is exported to Japan and some Southeast Asian countries. Its goal is to create the "Citrus City of China." Zhu Xiyan holds that moving forward, Zhongxian County will accelerate the pace of attracting investment into farmland -- the marriage of urban capital and enterprise capital.