On June 21, over 20 e-commerce operators were packing fresh-picked summer oranges for delivery at the E-commerce Poverty Alleviation Business Incubator in Guzhai New Village, Xiaopu Town, Jiangyong County of Hunan province.

Jiangyong boasts its famous distinctive agricultural products like pomelo, taro, fragrant rice and orange, but it is not easy to sell them subject to geographic conditions. By the end of 2014, Jiangyong, with a registered population of 270,000, had more than 40,000 recorded poor population in 8,038 poverty-stricken households, registering a poverty incidence of 15.83%.

“The regional disadvantages force us to turn our eyes on e-commerce.” said Zhou Lifu, secretary of Jiangyong County CPC Committee, adding that Jiangyong has encouraged the development of e-commerce in villages and rolled out a package of preferential measures since 2015. It helps poor people who intend to start online business get the hardware and software in place; provide free training to farmers throughout the county; and reword those who start online stores or set up e-commerce businesses. As of now, there are over 500 online shops operated by poor households in the county and the village-level e-commerce service centers link all the administrative villages.

“So far, about 40% of our agriculture products are sold through the e-commerce platforms.” said Yin Ling, director of the E-commerce Office of Jiangyong County. With the market for farm products, the initiative of special fruit and vegetable planters are fully motivated. At present, there are 216,000 mu (14,400 ha.) of fruit and 166,000 mu (about 11,066 ha.) of quality vegetable.

This article is from Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Wu Lirong

Chinese source:hn.people.com.cn