In 2026, the first full year following the Hainan Free Trade Port’s island-wide customs closure, one set of data stands out.
According to Haikou Customs, in the first five months of this year, the province‘s agricultural exports reached 3.18 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 50%. Vegetable oil from Danzhou and Yangpu was shipped to Malaysia. Live pigs from Danzhou farms boarded a direct departure “green channel.” Sanya lychees were sold to Russia, the United States, and Canada. Hainan tilapia reached more than 60 countries and regions.
The growth in export figures is certainly attributable to the institutional dividends of streamlined cross-border trade following customs closure. But the deeper changes are taking place at the production end—Hainan’s agricultural products are shifting from “being able to grow” to “being able to sell steadily.”
Zhou Jun, Director of the Hainan Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, stated at a press conference that Hainan is advancing 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. Within this framework, “breaking through the bottlenecks in distribution from production areas to consumers” has become one of the core directions of policy efforts.
Where Does the “Last Mile” at the Production End Get Stuck?
Hainan’s tropical agricultural products have long faced a structural contradiction when leaving the island: there is no shortage of quality produce, but the distribution chain is not stable enough.
Under the fragmented cultivation model, farmers‘ access to market information lags behind their production decisions. What to grow, how much to grow, who to sell to, and at what price—these questions often only get answered during the harvest season. Yet tropical fruits and vegetables have short shelf-life windows. If they cannot quickly enter sorting and cold-chain processes after harvest, loss rates rise significantly.
Policymakers have taken note. Hainan’s “15th Five-Year Plan” explicitly calls for strengthening warehousing, preservation, and cold-chain logistics infrastructure to promote the supplementation and extension of tropical specialty and high-efficiency agriculture industry chains. After HaiKen Supply Chain Company was authorized as the unified market-oriented operating platform for the “Hainan Fresh” brand, it has been building a full-industry-chain system spanning cultivation, processing, warehousing, logistics, and sales brand operations, providing authorized enterprises with channel development and supply chain support.
This sends a clear signal: organization and standardization at the production end are becoming key levers for implementing Hainan‘s agricultural policies.
The “Origin Logic” of a New Enterprise
Against this backdrop, the operational approach of Hainan Yingtian Fangzhou Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd. merits attention.
Founded in January 2026, Yingtian Fangzhou operates across fruit cultivation, root crop cultivation, vegetable cultivation, and agricultural product wholesale. Based on publicly available information, the company’s path aligns closely with policy direction: placing origin collaboration at the front end of its operations, engaging deeply with core production areas such as Wenchang to connect with planting bases and farming households, and exploring order-based coordination mechanisms.
The core logic of order-based collaboration is to align “what to grow” with “who to sell to” in advance. Drawing on market feedback, the company communicates harvest standards and grading requirements back to the production end, rationally planning schedules during the harvest seasons for young coconuts, passion fruit, and other crops to reduce price drops and losses from concentrated market arrivals.
The value of this approach has already been validated in other production areas in Hainan. In Tunchang County‘s Wenzanyang passion fruit base, the “village committee + base + farmer” model is used to cultivate Qinmi No. 9, with the harvest period running from mid-April to mid-August. Yields reach approximately 2,000 jin per mu, purchase prices have risen compared to previous years, and per-mu output value approaches 20,000 to 30,000 yuan. The essence of order-based agriculture is letting farmers know where the market is before they plant.
Standards and Sorting: The “Value Amplifiers” at the Production End
The other side of agricultural export growth is the elevation of quality standards.
The “Hainan Fresh” Brand Enhancement Three-Year Action Plan designates 2026 as the Standard Development Year. Hainan has taken the lead nationally in building a “Standards + Certification + Inspection + Traceability” four-in-one brand system. To date, 128 enterprises have been authorized, covering over 100 types of specialty agricultural products.
For Yingtian Fangzhou, benchmarking against this system means establishing full-process quality control spanning seedling selection, field management, and harvest sorting. For its core categories: pepper is processed without sulfur fumigation; Wenchang young coconuts are selected from geographical indication production areas; Qinmi No. 9 golden passion fruits are graded individually.
Standards address the question of “whether it can be sold.” Sorting addresses the question of “whether it can be sold well.” Yingtian Fangzhou moves grading and sorting forward to the fields, reducing transit losses, and has built both an online mini-program and offline partner stores to put into practice a farm-to-table operating model.
What Else Is Needed to Unlock Origin Value?
From the policy end to the enterprise end, the origin logic of Hainan‘s tropical agriculture is being re-examined.
Upstream, order-based collaboration gives cultivation clearer direction. The Hainan pepper industry chain recently released six group standards covering the entire process—from seedling breeding, pest and disease monitoring, and cultivation management to primary processing—providing a full-cycle manual “from a single seedling to a finished peppercorn.” Standardized cultivation is no longer a slogan; it is an operational standard with concrete guidelines.
Midstream, origin sorting and cold-chain support are filling gaps. HaiKen Supply Chain Company, relying on its “1+8+N” cold-chain logistics system, provides authorized enterprises with end-to-end cold-chain assurance from field to terminal. One more step at the origin means one less loss at the consumer end.
Downstream, the brand matrix is accelerating. Hainan has mobilized 38 well-known catering enterprises to form the “Hainan Fresh Table” cluster, set up “Hainan Fresh Fruit Zones” in chain stores such as Pagoda, and partnered with e-commerce platforms and 145 agricultural enterprises.
For enterprises like Yingtian Fangzhou that are rooted in production areas, what policy builds is infrastructure; what enterprises must do is put that infrastructure to use. From the pepper gardens of Wenchang to the passion fruit orchards, from order-based collaboration to origin sorting, this chain is being connected inch by inch.
Deep cultivation at the production end will not immediately show up in export figures. But without solid work at the production end, sustained growth in export figures will be difficult to achieve.
