Avocado-Growing Areas in Yunnan and Sichuan Expanding Rapidly

The large-scale harvesting of avocados kicked off this October in Yunnan province’s Menglian County. The avocado-growing area in Menglian County currently stands at 46,000 mu (7,600 acres) and is projected to reach 100,000 mu (16,500 acres) by 2025.

After farmers have picked the fruits and roughly sorted them according to size, the avocados are loaded into trucks and taken away for further processing. The avocados must then pass through several “checkpoints,” such as cleaning, drying and sorting, prior to being packaged and shipped to customers. Sorting is partially performed automatically by machines, which assess the fruit by weight and exterior shape before classifying them into different grades. According to sources at the production sites, the harvest volume has already exceeded 1,000 tons and is expected to reach 4,000 tons by the end of the year, with a projected total value of approximately 80 million Chinese yuan ($12 million). Offline sales account for 60–70% of sales volume, with online sales taking up the remainder.

In particular, online sellers capitalized on the recent “Double Eleven” holiday, a major online shopping event in China, to push online avocado sales through limited-time deals. Orders came in from not only the metropolises of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou as anticipated but also all over the country. According to one online seller, over 100,000 orders were placed during the Double Eleven holiday period alone. Online sales through major platforms such as Tmall, Pinduoduo and JD have already surpassed one million orders in 2020, corresponding to a total value of approximately 5 million yuan ($760,000).

Aside from Yunnan’s Menglian County, Huidong County in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan province has also been rapidly expanding its avocado production since 2019. This June, China’s largest avocado production enterprise Pu’er Luyin Eco-Technologies Co. Ltd. (普洱绿银生物科技公司) worked with local Sichuanese companies to found Sichuan Huijin Agricultural Development Company (四川会金农业发展有限公司), which has so far established 3,100 mu (511 acres) of avocado-growing area in Huidong County.

It is projected that these orchards will be able to produce 1.5 tons of avocados per mu (9 tons per acre) with an output value of 40,000 yuan per mu ($37,000 per acre). For the current 3,100 mu, this corresponds to a total volume of approximately 5,000 tons and a value of 120 million yuan ($18.2 million). This is presently the largest avocado production region in Liangshan Prefecture. Avocados are currently being grown experimentally both in Liangshan and in parts of the neighboring city of Panzhihua. Local growers have indicated that the area seems very suitable for avocado production, and they expect the saplings to start producing flowers around March of next year.

Image: Pixabay

This article was translated from Chinese. Read the original article.