Leisure food helps promote rural revitalization

The workshop of Hunan Qinghe Livestock Industry Company is a hive of activity. Now, the company are busy with production, with sales output value exceeding 10 million yuan, achieving a good start in this year.

In the live broadcast room of the company, the anchor is introducing the quality, culture, and history of Xiangxi yellow beef, and various flavors of beef products.

Because of the rich nutrition, excellent quality and a chewy texture of Xiangxi yellow beef, products like beef with skin, canned beef hotpot, beef jerky snacks are popular among customers. Liu Zhiqiu, general manager of the company introduced: “we are now selling products online and offline. We invite anchors to sell goods online, and we have our own live broadcast rooms to attract fans. The offline sales channels mainly include state-owned enterprise procurement, and enterprises such as Sinopec and PetroChina are our important customers.”

Liu Zhiqiu added that the company also sells other high-quality agricultural and sideline products in Fenghuang County, like Fenghuang kiwifruit, Fenghuang preserved meat and sausage and Fenghuang rice noodles, in a bid to help the production and marketing of Fenghuang agricultural and sideline products.

Since last year, the company has signed strategic cooperation agreements for rural revitalization with Hunan Liangdaxia Catering, 58 Agricultural Service Information and Changsha Fenghuang Chamber of Commerce.

It has also signed procurement agreements for Xiangxi yellow beef with member representatives of the Hunan Cuisine Industry Promotion Association and Jinan City of Shandong Province, Lanzhou City of Gansu Province, and other regions. To meet the needs of customers nationwide, the company has ramped up production to fulfill orders since the beginning of this year.

Tang Jilian, director of the production plant of the company, said, “We started working on the seventh day of the first lunar month. This year, there have been a lot of orders, and we have been working overtime every day to complete orders. This week, we have packed products for over 2,000 orders.”

And physical stores offline are also crowed with people. An endless stream of customers come to the Window of Fenghuang County, a distribution center for ethnic characteristic products in Wuling Mountain Area, to taste and buy agricultural products.

The company has transferred over 13,000 mu (about 866.67 hectares) of fattening cattle breeding base, with a management model of base plus village plus cooperative plus farmer.  It has signed breeding and sales service cooperation agreements with 16 villages and over 600 farmers in Fenghuang County, as well as 60 cooperatives in 7 counties and 1 city in Xiangxi Prefecture.

The company now has a cattle production capacity of about 1.5 billion yuan, creating more than 200 job opportunities for local farmers and indirectly providing job opportunities for over 4,000 people.

Wu Jiezhi, chairman of the company said that this year, the company has added two new production lines, and all leisure food will be independently produced in the future.

At the same time, to better serve customers, a slaughterhouse production workshop has been established, and fresh beef will be directly sent out from Fenghuang County in the future, no longer relying on outsourced processing enterprises.

Faced with new market demands, the company has led villagers to plant red-flesh kiwifruit at a base in Fenghuang County covering 400 mu (26.67 hectares), forming a complete industrial chain of production, processing and sales of leisure food, effectively enhancing the added value of agricultural products.

Leisure food has truly become a prosperous industry for local villagers, and injected new vitality into rural revitalization.