Jianshanping Village, Huaping Township, Zhenping County, Anking City, Shaanxi Province, native Zhang Yuren (left) introduces a site known as the Shangwan Agricultural Park in the hamlet. Materials used in traditional Chinese medicine are produced at the park.

Surrounded by rolling mountains that impeded transportation, Jianshanping Village, Huaping Township, Zhenping County, Anking City, Shaanxi Province, was once known for its impoverishment. The waters of Zhenping are also part of the middle section of an important water project that has helped to address the serious imbalance in water resources that exists between north and south China known as the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, which has resulted in the county being strictly prohibited from pursuing industries that pollute the environment. Possessing a longstanding and widespread history of farming materials used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and located in one of the four main regions in China that do so, Zhenping produces 1,730 types of TCM products as of 2023. With 1,897 mu of arable land and 23,904 mu of forestland – a large proportion of its territory – most of Jianshanping's 1,029 permanent residents cultivate TCM materials.

Jianshanping native Zhang Yuren was born in 1972 and left the village at the age of 25 in search of better opportunities. He found part time work at first, later learned to paint, and eventually began pursuing the TCM industry. Zhang gradually became more prosperous after years of hard work but never forgot his hometown and his neighbours, some of whom had helped him and his family.

In 2012, he returned to Jianshanping and invested in a small hydropower station known as Dawangbao with two other people. The facility generates around 2 million kWh of power and more than RMB700,000 of total revenue per year as of early 2023.

A public university located in Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, that is affiliated with the Ministry of Education and is the first national institution for higher pharmaceutical education in China known as China Pharmaceutical University (CPU) began providing poverty alleviation assistance in Zhenping in late 2012. The university ultimately decided to help the county upgrade its traditional TCM industry via coordinated development of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, and Zhang began learning how to grow plants used in TCM through it in 2014.

Later that year, Zhang established a collective known as the Zhenping Shangwan Crop Cultivation and Livestock Farming Cooperative and a business known as Zhenping Huawan Ecological Agriculture Development Co. Ltd. with the help of the school. The organisations are focused on cultivating characteristic alpine fruit, growing herbs and other plants used in TCM in under-canopy areas, rearing cold-water alpine fish, and engaging in sericulture and ecological tourism.

The experts who have been involved have helped Zhenping gradually overcome shortcomings that existed in its traditional TCM industry. For example, they helped shorten the growth cycle of coptis plants, a genus of flowering herbs that play an important role in TCM, by optimising seedling cultivation methods; increase coptis yields from 100 kg per mu to over 200 kg per mu for those grown in greenhouses and from up to 50 kg per mu to 150 kg to 170 kg per mu for those grown under tree canopies by standardising cultivation methods; and save farmers' time and increase quality and the level of standardisation by replacing traditional processing methods with mechanised processes, which had the added effect of preserving coptis whiskers that were previously burned off or discarded and thus making it possible to further process them into animal medication for value-added purposes.

Coptis prices tend to fluctuate by up to nearly RMB100 per kg, however. In order to ensure that profit is achieved even when prices are low, it was necessary to reduce production inputs and increase yields per mu. For example, farmers were only able to obtain good profits when prices rose to RMB260 per kg when 50 kg of yields were being generated per mu, but profit could still be obtained if the price dropped to RMB150 per kg once yields increased to at least 100 kg per mu.

Experienced workers can also help reduce costs. In 2023, Zhang mentioned that he used to have to hire at least 23 people for every mu of land that coptis was grown on in 2018 but that he only needed to hire 13 or 14 to do the same work at present as a result of coptis farmers' speed and familiarity with standardised cultivation improving over the years.

Extending the value chain has also increased profits. Zhang only sold honeysuckle, another common TCM ingredient, in its raw, unprocessed form in the very beginning. Revenues often came to less than RMB200 per kg, which barely covered harvesting and drying costs and did not result in net profit when cultivation and management expenses were factored in.

In 2022, Zhang began producing dry honeysuckle tea. Around RMB600 of revenue is generated for every kilogram that is sold, which leads to considerable net profit. In September 2023, a CPU expert who had taken on the role of acting deputy county magistrate of Zhenping helped him develop a cooperative arrangement with a scientific research institute, and he began developing liquid honeysuckle beverages as well in order to create more new products and additional added value.

Country: China

Partners: China Pharmaceutical University (CPU)