In autumn, Hainan’s produce is at its finest. Rambutan hangs heavy on the branches in Qiongzhong, leveraging the mountainous climate‘s “time gap” to follow Baoting’s main production area and capture market premiums through off-season listing. In Chengmai, ten thousand mu of seedless honey pomelo have entered the peak harvest season, with an estimated output of 11,000 tons and an output value of 220 million yuan. Meanwhile, at the “Invest in Hainan Free Trade Port Agricultural Cooperation Exchange Conference” held in Xiamen, the investment promotion of Hainan‘s tropical specialty and high-efficiency agriculture attracted widespread attention from enterprises. “The policy dividends of island-wide customs closure continue to be released, and tropical specialty and high-efficiency agriculture is embracing a prime opportunity for development.”
The convergence of abundant produce and favorable policy winds marks a window for Hainan’s agriculture to shift from “growing more” to “growing smart and selling well.” Hainan Yingtian Fangzhou Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd., rooted in core production areas such as Wenchang, is exploring an origin-based operational path suited to tropical specialty crops through order-based collaboration, standardized cultivation, and origin sorting.
Policy Window: The New Agricultural Logic After Customs Closure
The year 2026 is the first full year following the Hainan Free Trade Port‘s island-wide customs closure, as well as the opening year of the “15th Five-Year Plan.” Zhou Jun, Director of the Hainan Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, stated at a press conference that during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period, Hainan will advance agricultural and rural modernization under the “2+4+3” overarching framework, with a focus on the “Five Stabilizations, Four Directions, and Three New” initiatives, transforming tropical specialty and high-efficiency agriculture into a modern major industry and a “trump card” of Hainan’s economy.
On the branding front, the “Hainan Fresh” Brand Enhancement Three-Year Action Plan designates 2026 as the Standard Development Year, focusing on pioneering brand enhancement in categories such as sweet potatoes, pineapples, Wenchang chicken, and Hainan tilapia, and building the first batch of “Standards + Certification + Inspection + Traceability” brand standards. By 2028, the goal is to certify over 100 “Hainan Fresh” sub-brands and promote the internationalization of two regional public brands.
Yingtian Fangzhou‘s business scope—fruit cultivation, root crop cultivation, vegetable cultivation, and agricultural product wholesale—falls squarely along the extension of this policy framework. Rather than pursuing a broad, all-encompassing approach, the company focuses on Hainan’s signature categories: pepper, young coconuts, passion fruit, and sweet potatoes—aligning with the “stabilizing tropical crops” direction under the “Five Stabilizations” framework.
Origin Collaboration: Using Orders to Answer “What to Grow”
Hainan is rich in tropical agricultural resources, but under the fragmented cultivation model, farmers face practical challenges such as asymmetric market information and unstable sales channels. The story of Changxing Village in Qiongzhong is telling: a decade ago, villagers made a living growing rubber and betel nut. After betel nut returns declined in 2016, village leaders Huang Hui and Wang Youzheng traveled to Baoting to learn from successful practices, leading the trial planting of over 50 mu of rambutan to explore a path for the entire village. Following the success of the trial, the village established a company, expanded planting to over 500 mu with support from rural revitalization funds, and absorbed over 300 person-times of temporary labor.
The essence of this process is a shift from “plant first, figure out the market later” to “find the market first.” Yingtian Fangzhou‘s approach aligns with this logic—placing origin collaboration at the forefront of its operations, engaging deeply with core production areas such as Wenchang, connecting with planting bases and farming households, and communicating harvest standards and grading requirements back to the production end based on market feedback. During the harvest seasons for young coconuts, passion fruit, and other crops, it plans schedules rationally to secure profit margins for growers.
Building on Standards: Benchmarking Against the “Hainan Fresh” Quality System
“Hainan Fresh” brand certification requires products to hold at least one of the following valid credentials: Green Food, Organic Agricultural Products, or Geographical Indication Agricultural Products. Yingtian Fangzhou benchmarks against this system, establishing full-process quality control spanning seedling selection, field management, and harvest sorting.
For its core categories: pepper is processed without sulfur fumigation to preserve its authentic origin flavor; Wenchang young coconuts are selected from geographical indication production areas; Qinmi No. 9 golden passion fruits are graded individually; and Qiaotou sweet potatoes maintain their quality signature through origin advantages.
The experience of Qiongzhong rambutan is equally instructive: in 2025, expert teams from the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences and the Hainan Fine Fruit Industry Technology System visited Qiongzhong to provide technical support, recommending the development of a distinctive brand based on off-season and quality advantages. Standards are not a constraint—they are the channel through which origin advantages are “seen” by the market.
Brand Empowerment: Making Origin Value Visible to More People
Under the guidance of the “Hainan Fresh” brand enhancement initiative, the province is driving the transformation of local specialty products from selling raw materials to selling value. Hainan‘s “15th Five-Year Plan” explicitly calls for “seeking returns from branding,” pushing brands toward premium positioning, online channels, and international markets.
On top of a solid supply chain foundation, Yingtian Fangzhou explores the origin value behind Hainan’s produce, leveraging online channels to share scenes from the fields and the terroir of production areas—helping more consumers understand the growth logic behind Hainan‘s tropical agricultural products. At the same time, the company implements order-based collaboration and farmer-linking mechanisms, enabling farming households to share in the dividends of industrial development.
From a mu of pepper fields to an out-of-island order, what lies in between is standards, sorting, and branding. Each of these steps is demanding, but each one is worth doing.
