At a vegetable farm in Xintian county of Yongzhou, Hunan province, a fleet of refrigerated trucks lined up in the early morning to be loaded with Chinese cabbages destined for Hong Kong.
"The vegetables leave at dawn, reach Hong Kong by noon, and will be on supermarket shelves by evening," said Liu Wen, 36, general manager of Dongsheng farm.
Liu's roots run deep in Xintian's vegetable fields. From the age of six or seven, he accompanied his father on trucks to collect produce from nearby towns. After gaining experience at an investment firm abroad and exploring markets in the Middle East, Liu recognized the potential for international trade to benefit his hometown. In 2020, he returned home and restarted his career at the farm.
"I wanted to use what I learned to transform local specialties into global commodities," he said.
Recognizing that his vision required technological innovation, Liu established a corporate technology center and invested 20 million yuan ($3 million) into imported climate-control systems and drip-irrigation equipment; then he established an IoT platform for vegetable farming. Through a mobile app, managers can monitor temperature, humidity, light, and over 20 other parameters across seven production bases nationwide.
