Fruit farmers pick and then click to boost their incomes

A farmer picks oranges in Nanfeng county, Jiangxi province, Oct 4, 2015. [Photo/IC]

Cheng Minggao is a fruit farmer in Nanfeng county, Jiangxi province, and is hoping the thriving e-commerce market will turn all his hard work into hard cash.

With a bumper harvest from his 500-mu (33.33 hectares) orange groves safely gathered in, he is looking for the best possible price.

Hopefully, after joining a cooperative organized by an investment company to sell farm produce such as Cheng's oranges online, he will reap the rewards of working long summer days in the fields.

"Each of my three fields are likely to produce 25,000 to 30,000 kilograms of oranges this year," Cheng said.

"And if I can sell them at 3 yuan (47 US cents) a kg, it would at least cover my costs."

Cheng is a part of a 400-strong group of farmers that are part of a cooperative working 400 hectares of orange groves in the county.

It was set up by Jiangxi F&H Investment Development Co Ltd, a fruit investment company based in Nanfeng. "Nearly 30 percent of the oranges from the agricultural cooperative will be sold online this year," Zou Longsheng, who is assistant to the chairman at the company, said.

Plans are already in place to expand the cooperative to 2,000 farmers in 2016 after F&H Investment moved into e-commerce.

The company also aims to launch its own website , or Guomaocheng later this month.

"We hope to sell more than 5 million kgs of oranges through our own website this year, with sales of between 80 million and 100 million yuan," Zou said, adding that the new site will eventually include other farming produce.

The Guomaocheng platform should also help Nanfeng fruit farmers to expand into overseas markets in Europe and the United States, where there is a strong presence from African and Southeast Asian growers.

But for now, F&H Investment is concentrating on the domestic market and the rising online trend for high-quality fresh food.

"There is a market out there, but companies will have to wait for it to grow," Wang Xiaoxing, an analyst at Analysys International, an Internet consultancy in Beijing, said.

"Consumers in China really care about the quality of fresh products, particularly the middle class. But for now the market is small."

For the fruit farmers in Nanfeng, the key is quality over price in the short term. Oranges from the region already have a reputation for being sweet and juicy, with a 1,300-year-old history that dates back to the ancient emperors.

Now they must build on that brand and attract a new breed of online customers.

According to local officials, the average price of Nanfeng oranges is still too low. Last year, production costs were 2 yuan a kg, while wholesale prices were 3 yuan a kg.

"Oranges from F&H Investment sold at 20 yuan per kg in 2014 and we plan to raise the price to as high as 80 yuan this year," Zou said.

"That means farmers in the cooperative should see their incomes increase."

The company provides fertilizer and technological backup to members of the agricultural cooperative as well as financing, he pointed out.