Lotus farming grows into prosperous industry in Honghu, C China's Hubei

At a lotus planting base in Honghu city, central China's Hubei Province, Wang Wenjuan, head of the planting base, hosts a live-streaming session to sell freshly picked lotus rootlets. As she speaks enthusiastically in front of the camera, orders keep pouring in.

Wang Wenjuan picks lotus rootlets at a lotus pond in Honghu city, central China's Hubei Province. (People's Daily Online/Zhang Jun)

"Booming e-commerce, along with cold-chain logistics, and fresh preservation technologies, allows freshly picked farm products to directly reach markets across the country," said Zhou Yuting, head of the lotus root industry development center in Honghu.

Wang started to sell lotus roots online in 2012. During the New Year shopping festival that year, she received 3,000 orders a day.

She recalled that despite the high quality of Honghu lotus roots, difficulties in preservation and transportation once kept them from reaching wider markets or fetching good prices.

Wang discovered that lotus roots dug up by elderly villagers, left unwashed and coated in green mud in a cool place, could stay fresh for more than a month. She immediately gave up vacuum-packed washed lotus roots and switched to harvesting and shipping them with the mud still attached, gradually expanding sales channels.

"Thanks to the regional public brand of 'Honghu Lotus Root,' we no longer worry about sales," Wang said. Her business has grown from daily sales of just a few hundred yuan (1 yuan is about $0.15) to annual revenue of nearly 8 million yuan last year, with annual profits approaching 1 million yuan.

Workers pack lotus rootlets at a factory in Honghu, central China's Hubei Province. (People's Daily Online/Wang Guoji)

Inside the production workshop of Hubei Huagui Food Group, assembly lines run at full speed. Tender lotus rootlets are washed and packaged, while older ones are processed into ready-to-eat pickled lotus rootlets. The company has developed more than 100 innovative products, including pickled lotus rootlets, instant lotus root soup, lotus leaf tea and lotus leaf coffee.

Honghu has established a lotus root industry development center and introduced targeted support measures, including 10 million yuan in special subsidies to help enterprises upgrade equipment and technology, while coordinating 1.5 billion yuan in financial loans to support industrial growth.

Photo shows blooming lotus flowers at a lotus pond in Honghu, central China's Hubei Province. (Photo courtesy of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Honghu Municipal Committee)

So far, the city has built seven 10,000-mu (one mu is about 0.067 hectares) standardized lotus root demonstration bases. The city's lotus root industry now generates a total output value exceeding 12 billion yuan, with brand value reaching 25.86 billion yuan, helping 35,000 farming households increase annual income by an average of 960 yuan per mu.