City people eat whatever vegetables, farmers grow whatever

For the past several days, this writer has observed in the rural areas of Ningyuan County that more and more farmers in the county, before planting vegetables, like to go into the city to look at the menus in restaurants and eateries, ask the customers, and get a sense of the market.

"In the past, most farmers in our county just kept their heads down on their own 'one mu and three fen of land', planting and raising seasonal agricultural products in a routine way, and often had difficulty selling their products." said Ouyang Zhizhu, head of the county's Xinnong Chinese Yam Planting Cooperative. Modern farmers, besides keeping their heads down to learn scientific planting and raising knowledge, also need to raise their heads to keep a close eye on market information.

Ouyang Zhizhu's Chinese yam and kudzu root base has now reached a scale of over a thousand mu. Back when he was dining at a large restaurant in Guangdong, he found that Chinese yam and kudzu root were very popular with customers, so he seized the business opportunity and planted Chinese yam and kudzu root. Today, under his leadership, the once barren hills have become a treasure bowl, and many products from the base are sold to supermarkets and vegetable markets in coastal cities in Guangdong and Guangxi, setting the local villagers and more than 200 surrounding farming households on the road to prosperity.

Based on the principle of "grow whatever the city residents like to eat", farmers in the county keep their eyes fixed on city people's "mouths", going into hotels, running to eateries and visiting restaurants, seeking market opportunities from menus and customers' tastes. Vegetable farmers have adjusted their planting structure according to hotel menus, growing whatever dishes sell best in hotels. At the same time, they sign purchase and sales contracts with hotels; the hotels send a text message every evening announcing the next day's menu, and everyone delivers the needed specialty vegetables to the hotels early the next morning.

At present, the county has developed a distinctive industrial pattern of "one village, one industry" and "one village, multiple products". The distinctive agricultural products that farmers in the county directly supply to hotels have reached more than 30 series and over 80 varieties, and many fresh vegetables that are still in the fields in the early morning become green delicacies on city residents' dining tables by noon.