Villagers pitch in to ensure harvest

With the help of 30 workers, Peng Qianjin has managed to harvest half of the navel oranges in his orchard and meet demand in the peak sales period for the upcoming Spring Festival.

"In December, people around here began to show COVID-19 symptoms one after another, bringing a sudden labor shortage for the orange harvest season," said Peng, 47, a farmer from Pengjiapo village in Hubei province. Peng and his wife were also infected with COVID-19 in late December.

Peng has grown oranges in the village for over two decades and expected a harvest of around 30 metric tons of the fruit this year.

"As my wife and I gradually recovered, we began to worry about the harvest," he said, adding that workers from nearby villages came to help them.

"Teams from different villages helped us meet the demand for picking," said Li Qiang, Party secretary of Pengjiapo village.

"Around 60 percent of the villagers have been infected so far," he said. "To make sure everyone can manage, we sent out 200 health packages and made fever drugs available from the village clinic."

Peng, who is grateful for such coordination amid infections and a labor shortage, said: "With a good market this winter, I can sell my oranges for around 6 yuan (89 cents) a kilogram. The profit can increase by 40,000 yuan from that of 2021."

Known as the "hometown of oranges in China", Zigui county, where Pengjiapo village is located, has more than 26,600 hectares of orange orchards.

"We expect to bring in an annual yield of 800,000 tons of oranges, half of which will be harvested in the winter harvest season," said Zhang Guangguo, an expert from the county's agriculture bureau. "So far, 320,000 tons of oranges have been sold.

"Officials of townships and villages are actively guiding surplus labor from high mountain areas to work in relevant e-commerce and citrus processing enterprises to ensure their normal operation," he said.

There are more than 300 professional fruit-picking teams and social organizations working on the harvest in Zigui, he said.