Orchard Registration for Export Helps Hunan Citrus Go Global

Recently, the Changsha Customs Authority issued the "Registration Certificate of Production, Processing, and Storage Entities of Specific Outbound Animals, Plants, Their Products and Other Quarantine Objects" to the Baojing County Citrus Association. The "Baojing Golden Orange Export Fruit Orchard" passed registration as an export orchard for fresh fruit, marking that Baojing Golden Orange has officially obtained the qualification for independent fresh fruit export and secured access to the international market.

Baojing County has a citrus planting area of 176,000 mu (approximately 11,733 hectares), with an annual output of 185,400 tonnes and an output value of 1.806 billion CNY, driving income growth for 70,000 people. Citrus is a key industry for increasing local residents' income; however, orchards in the region are scattered and individual orchards are small in scale. As a result, the vast majority of growers are unable to meet customs registration requirements for an export fruit orchard on their own, and the situation of "having good fruit but no export certificate" once became a major bottleneck for citrus exports.

With operational guidance from the Changsha Customs and Xiangxi Customs authorities, and technical support from the Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Citrus Research Institute of Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Baojing County explored a new path for export fruit orchard registration with the association as the registration entity and multiple orchards are jointly built and shared. The Baojing County Citrus Association handles unified applications, sets uniform standards, and oversees unified management and regulation, while orchards owned by village collective economic organizations and cooperatives are incorporated as member orchards. The large contiguous production areas in Bi'er Town and Qingshuiping Town are declared as a whole under the model of "one registration entity + multiple member orchards," with centralized review and one-time registration. Member orchards share the registration qualification, thereby uniting scattered small orchards into an export consortium and effectively lowering the export entry threshold for individual fruit farmers.

Meanwhile, Baojing County has established four major systems for green pest prevention and control, farm activity logs and traceability management, multi-level quality testing, and staff training, and improved two major mechanisms for dynamic withdrawal and risk emergency response. The county has also strictly guarded the quality bottom line for export products, ensuring that all orchards can successfully pass subsequent customs verification.

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

Translator: Xiao Juan

Chinese source: Hunan Daily