Agricultural industry

With advantageous geography and a favorable climate, Guangxi is known for producing numerous agricultural products, providing a solid foundation for the development of its agricultural industry. In recent years, the industry has seen steady growth and is forecast to continue its expansion over the coming years.

In 2018, the added value of the agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishing industries hit 311.44 billion yuan ($46.45 billion), a year-on-year increase of 5.6 percent, recording the fastest pace of growth since 2013. Agricultural products characteristic of the region also continued to enjoy steady growth, with grain output recorded at 13.73 million metric tons for 2018, and the output of sugar cane, citrus fruit, silkworm cocoons, arabian jasmine flowers and buffalo milk ranked first in the country.

In addition, the emerging industries of selenium-rich agriculture, leisure agriculture and organic and circular agriculture saw rapid development, boosting farmers’ incomes.

Despite the progress Guangxi has made in rural and agricultural development, the region still has weak agricultural infrastructure, and mechanization and standardization on farms remains at a low level.

More work is also needed to develop deep-processing industrial chains and clusters.

In order to promote the high-quality development of the region’s agricultural products, Guangxi announced a new set of policies on March 6. From now on, the region plans to prioritize the development of agriculture and rural areas, with a focus on its rural revitalization strategy as the starting point.

Work will be carried out to deepen agricultural supply-side structural reforms, focus on the improvement of quality, efficiency and competitiveness, maintain ecofriendly and innovation-driven development, and push forward the construction of a modern agricultural industrial system, in order to boost yields and incomes.

The new policies help ensure that the region will manage to meet its goals and complete its tasks for rural reform and development by 2020. And 12 characteristic industrial clusters will be built, focusing on high-quality grains, sugar cane, fruit, vegetables, sericulture, tea, edible mushrooms, traditional Chinese medicinal herbs, fish, livestock, poultry and sasanqua.

To set a new benchmark for the cyclical development of the country’s sugar industry, the region will take measures to promote deep-processing and develop high value-added products, such as molasses, bagasse, lime sludge, sugarcane leaves and tails. Measures will be taken to promote the strategic recombination to foster a number of leading competitive sugar enterprises, and promote the construction of a national science and technology center for the research and development of sugar. It is expected that by 2020, the general output of the sugar industry will hit 80 billion yuan.

In terms of the processing industry for agricultural products, the region will build a batch of processing bases to promote the intensive processing of bulk farm products. It will accelerate the development of new varieties of grain and oil in Qinzhou, Beihai and Fangchenggang, as well as boost the grain and oil processing industry in the Beibu Gulf region.

Products manufactured from the deep processing of camellia oil will be developed in Liuzhou, Baise, Hechi and Guilin, and the region will give additional support to Nanning and Guilin to accelerate the characteristic industries producing Arabian jasmine flowers and Momordica grosvenori. It is estimated that by 2020, the total output value of farm product processing in the region will exceed 650 billion yuan.