For the last few days, various tea-oil demonstration bases in Ningxiang City have been bustling with life, and the trees are covered with oil tea fruits. Now, the oil-tea trees and the tea seed oil are a ready source of income for farmers in the city.

Now, the 100-hectare odd oil-tea base of Ningxiang Zhenshan Oil-tea Forest Professional Cooperative in Quanlong Village, Yujiaao Township, Ningxiang City, sees a bumper crop. In the base, you can see piles of oil-tea fruits weighing more than 13,500 kg, which were harvested from the only 8-hectare Sanhua oil-tea trees planted in 2018.  
“The biggest one weighs 100g.” Wang Zhengshan, head of the cooperative, said that he began planting oil-tea trees in 2014. By this year, the 36.67-hectare oil-tea trees can produce 300,000 kg of oil-tea fruits. The fresh fruits are worth 1.2 million yuan at the price of 4 yuan per kilogram.

Owing to proper management and bumper harvest year, Wang Zhengshan is very happy. The cooperative also cooperated with some private households in the surrounding areas. Several farmers, who were once registered poor households, have shaken off poverty in recent years after they worked in the oil-tea base in slack farming season.
In Nanling Village, Yujiaao Township, Ruihong Oil-tea Professional Cooperative planted 51.6 hectares of improved oil-tea trees in 2010. Jiang Xiaohua, head of the cooperative said that the output increases year by year in the first few years of the peak production period. Last year, 150,000 kg of fresh oil-tea fruits were picked. And this year, it’s expected that the output of fresh fruits will exceed 750,000 kg and generate over three million yuan.

“Ningxiang Forestry Bureau has provided a series of training courses to teach us how to trim away crowded branches, fertilize and control some diseases and pests. With the help of the bureau, the output and profit increased,” said Jiang Xiaohua.

After implementing the three-year action plan for transformation of low-yield oil-tea forests, Ningxiang has completed the classified transformation of 2,000 hectares of low-yield oil-tea forests and built three demonstration sites. After the transformation, the output per mu has seen an obvious growth.
Last year, the city completed the transformation of 45.33 hectares of low-yield oil-tea forests and planted 400 hectares of new tea-oil trees. For the land greening project, 17 central finance low-yield oil-tea forest transformation industrial development projects were implemented in 14 towns. Six enterprises, six cooperatives and five individuals applied for the construction of 470-hectare low-yield oil-tea forest transformation bases, with a total investment of 10.1399 million yuan.

“We focus on policy publicity and technological training. Now, there are various policies at the national, provincial, municipal and county levels to promote the development of oil-tea industry. And we also hold two or three technical training sessions every year to solve existing problems.” Gao Guohong, deputy director and senior engineer of Ningxiang Forestry Technology Promotion Center, said that the city is a large oil-tea county, and the output value of the industrial chain has exceeded 1 billion yuan.

Statistics show that there are more than 8,733 hectares of oil tea tea trees in Ningxiang which can yield 3,761 tons of oil tea seeds and 738 tons of tea seed oil, generating the annual output value of 156 million yuan.