Xuwen sweetens pineapple season

Xuwen county in Zhanjiang, crowned as the hometown of pineapples, held the China (Xuwen) Pineapple Culture & Tourism Festival from April 28 to 30, attracting experts and traders from across the country.

The festival featured a series of fun competitions, performances, and even acycling race around the "Sea of Pineapples", a pineapple-themed tourist attraction in Qujie town.

Zhanjiang's Xuwen county holds the second China (Xuwen) Pineapple Culture & Tourism Festival from April 28 to 30, attracting businesspeople and industry experts. [Photo by Zhang Zaiyang/Chinanews.com]

Several scholars gave speeches on how to develop agricultural industry as well as improve plantation methods.

It was the second time Xuwen, the largest pineapple manufacturer in China, held the festival. A total of no less than 260,000 mu (17,333 hectares) of fields produce over 400,000 metric tons of pineapples a year, approximately a third of China's total.

Having been an example for pineapple planting and processing for many years, Xuwen is still periodically harmed by global issues such as price fluctuation.

A bevy of chefs cook pineapple fried rice in a three-meter-wide pot at the closing ceremony of the Xuwen pineapple festival on April 30.[Photo by Luo Cheng/yinsha.com]

Wu Kanjue, an experienced pineapple grower hoped that the festival could attract leading enterprises to help formulate and promote planting criteria and build famous brands to ensure quality as well as stabilize prices.

Fang Guizhen, vice-chairman of Xuwen's pineapple industry association, said that e-commerce channels have been built but so far have not been widely adopted. He claimed that the few order were due to the fruit's short shelf life and a lack of trust in unknown brands.

The festival takes place at Xuwen county's "Sea of Pineapples", a popular tourist attraction. [Photo/yinsha.com]

"We are happy to see that the event attracted many internet businesspeople that showed cooperation intent to bolster industrial circulation," said Fang. "And among them they say that strengthening quality is still the most important issue."

The event also helped nail down 10 projects in the fields of logistics and agricultural tourism with a total of investment of more than 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion), which was expected to create a better business environment for the industry.