Kiwifruit growers in NW China’s Shaanxi benefit from a smart industrial chain

Different from previous kiwifruit harvest seasons when he was busy looking for buyers, this year, You Changjiang has sold out all 40,000 kg of kiwifruits he grew, more quickly than in previous seasons thanks to a complete kiwifruit industrial chain that became fully established in the locality this year.

A worker sorts kiwifruits at an agricultural company in Zhouzhi county, Shaanxi Province on Oct. 18, 2021. (Photo/Xinhua)

Based in Zhouzhi county, northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, You has been growing kiwifruits for 21 years. With a total kiwifruit planting area of 432,000 mu (28,800 hectares), the county has about 1,000 kiwifruit planting cooperatives, and more than 300,000 people involved in the kiwifruit business.

However, in the past, growers didn’t sell their fruits as smoothly as they do nowadays due to weak links found in the sorting, packing, storing and transport processes.

“When I first started growing kiwifruit, there were no sales channels available in the local market, so I had to have the fruits transported to markets located in east China’s Shandong Province and Shanghai, but only ended up discovering that it was a losing business,” said the man.

You was not the only grower who had difficulties selling their kiwifruits, with the standards under which the fruits were planted not being sufficiently high enough and with the fruits unable to be classified according to their size and quality. Another reason was a lack of storage and cold chain facilities in the locality, which meant that once picked the fruits could not be kept in storage and transit for longer times prior to sales.

To boost the sales of kiwifruits, Shaanxi Province has explored ways to upgrade its agricultural industrial chains, ramped up research and development efforts on machinery and pollen to enable the development of seeds, and invested heavily to improve infrastructure. In September 2021, a smart fruit supply chain was established in Wugong county, which is 20 kilometers from You’s home.

Covering 36,000 square meters, the facility has a cold storage, lines to automatically separate high-quality fruits from low-quality ones, and automatic sorting lines, being able to handle 160,000 orders of kiwifruits in one single day.

“In the past, the percentage of damaged goods was as high as 15 percent, but after the smart supply chain center was adopted, the rate was lowered to 7.3 percent, which has significantly reduced costs,” introduced Luo Xiangfeng, head of a local fruit company. The man said he expects to deliver 20 million parcels containing kiwifruits throughout 2021, which will be an increase of 46.9 percent year-on-year.