This summer, Ding Fei, a grower in Shatou Township, Guangling District, was busier than ever. His family farm saw a bumper harvest of watermelons, supplying city supermarkets while also participating in township-organized weekend farmers' markets, hosting family picking events, and supplying brewing companies directly. "With the green certification, our watermelons have a wider market and better prices. It's busy, but fulfilling—life is getting more promising every day," Ding Fei said with vigor as he tended his watermelon greenhouses.

In neighboring Lizhen Township, aquaculture farmer Ma Min was constantly on the move between fields and ponds. His breeding base uses an ecological "rice-crayfish co-culture" method, producing crayfish of far superior quality to ordinary ones. "We not only supply local restaurants and fresh food markets stably, but thanks to the 'Huanzhou No.1' rural tourism route, food lovers from as far away as Nanjing and Shanghai come to us," Ma Min said with a beaming, confident smile. The sound ecological farming industry has solidly supported his path to increased income and a better life.

In Guangling District, more and more farmers like Ding Fei and Ma Min are reaping the benefits of cross-sector development in modern agriculture. Leveraging its local specialty agricultural resources, the district has positioned itself around the "small but refined, superior but distinctive" urban agriculture model. It has forged a path of integrated development that builds on the primary industry while "connecting the secondary and tertiary sectors," gradually transforming scattered smallholder production into a complete, higher-value-added system integrating primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. Local specialty products have become "golden brands" with strong market recognition that boost farmers' incomes, injecting sustained momentum into rural revitalization.

At Jiangsu Cuijingyuan Organic Agriculture Co., Ltd. in Toutou Township, General Manager Kong Weixiang looked at the thriving rice paddies with undisguised joy: "Thanks to the provincial green high-quality agricultural product base, our products can go directly to processing companies or supermarkets. We don't have to run around looking for buyers—we can reliably secure good returns." To date, Guangling District has built 6 provincial-level green high-quality agricultural product bases covering 77,300 mu, and holds 49 "two-product-one-standard" agricultural products, including 41 green food items, 6 organic products, and 2 geographical indication products. Green and high-quality products account for 84.4% of the total.

"Guangling rice, Guangling bighead carp, and Guangling strawberries have all been recognized as national specialty and new agricultural products. Toutou Township has been approved as Jiangsu Province's 'Flavor Rice Town,' and Shatou Township has made the list for the 2026 National Agricultural Industry Strong Town—the only township from Yangzhou to be selected," said Liu Mingxing, an official with the Guangling District Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau. In recent years, the district has continuously consolidated its primary industry foundation, focusing on cultivating specialty categories such as Shatou fruits and melons, Toutou rice, and Lizhen aquatic products, enriching the modern agriculture "grain bag" and "vegetable basket" at the source.

Quality "local specialties" have laid a solid foundation for deep processing of agricultural products and rural cultural tourism. "A pound of watermelon sells for 2.5 yuan, but after brewing it into beer, one bottle can sell for 12 yuan." At a production facility in Shatou Township operated in partnership with the craft beer brand Hansen Bear, locally grown watermelons undergo fermentation and bottling to become "watermelon beer"—a hot-selling product in short supply. "Relying on the Shatou watermelon brand, deep processing allows us to multiply the product's added value several times over," explained Yao Chengqing, head of the Shatou Township Agricultural and Environmental Office. In addition to watermelon beer, Chenxing Village processes rice into "Xijiang Purple Rice Porridge" and "Dongjiang Oat Porridge." In 2025 alone, the agricultural product processing sector drove income growth of 40% for over 100 farming households.

At the Yangzhou Food Industry Park in Guangling District, a cluster of leading agricultural enterprises has developed, digesting most of the district's premium agricultural products while building brand recognition for Guangling's agricultural processing. This has dramatically changed the old low-end model of selling raw materials and unprocessed fruit, raising the overall added value of agricultural production. To date, the district has cultivated 26 above-scale agricultural product processing enterprises with annual revenue exceeding 3 billion yuan, and 32 leading agricultural enterprises at various levels. The agricultural product processing concentration zone centered on the Food Industry Park has become the city's first "Provincial Rural Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Industry Integrated Development Pilot Zone." Through further resource revitalization and "emptying the cage to welcome new birds," it now hosts over 170 agricultural product processing enterprises, with a continuously strengthening cluster advantage.

Meanwhile, a batch of distinctive, bustling agri-culture-sports-tourism integrated development projects are taking root and thriving across Guangling's rural areas, opening new avenues for local farmers to increase their incomes. In Fucheng Village, Toutou Township, flowers bloom year-round across more than 300 mu of greenhouses at Yanxi Flowers. Peng Luqing, a "new farmer" born in the 1980s, has built East China's largest high-end fresh-cut flower production base, offering flower arranging, picking, barbecue, and other diverse activities, with annual tourism revenue nearing 2 million yuan. Through an "enterprise + base + farmers" operating model, the base also employs over 100 local villagers, driving average annual income growth of more than 40,000 yuan per household. "Many villagers who had gone out for work have returned—either working at the base or buying flower seeds to grow at home and selling back to us," Peng Luqing said.

In neighboring Lizhen Township, the Yueya Lake fishing base draws a steady stream of visitors. The 1,500-mu lake produces bighead carp that have earned China Organic Product Certification from Zhonglv Huaxia for three consecutive years. Fishing culture markets are held regularly, featuring winter fishing, fish head stewing, and agricultural product fairs. The "Lizhen Xingnong Service Station," jointly established by Lizhen Township and Yangzhou Post, standardizes packaging and unified sales for scattered agricultural products, effectively solving farmers' sales difficulties and delivering local specialties directly to consumers' tables—something local farmers jokingly describe as "less worry, more income."

Shatou Township, meanwhile, has built a "three-market matrix" comprising the Weekend Farmers' Market, the Guangshat Night Market, and the Shatou Morning Market. Over the past three years, it has hosted more than 200 agri-culture-sports-tourism events such as beer season, camping season, and pet season, receiving 350,000 urban and rural visitors and nearly 10,000 teachers and students on study tours. Agricultural product sales have grown 42%, earning the township a spot on Jiangsu's outstanding cultural tourism consumption cases list. Today, a 51.2-kilometer "Huanzhou No.1" highway links the cultural and tourism integration scenarios across the "Three Northern Townships" of Toutou, Lizhen, and Shatou in Guangling District. Toutou's flower market, Lizhen's fishing culture market, and Shatou's three markets operate year-round with fresh offerings. Along the route, rural homestays, campsites, and picking gardens are springing up one after another, while town-center complexes, coffee shops, and other commercial amenities continue to improve... The vast rural countryside is becoming a stage where city residents flock to check in during holidays, and channels for increasing village collective and farmer incomes continue to widen.

From quality cultivation in the fields, to deep processing in factories, to rural cultural tourism experiences, Guangling District is accelerating the construction of a full modern agricultural industry chain spanning "production-processing-sales-experience." It is fully opening up a new industrial pattern where the primary sector builds the foundation, the secondary sector adds value, and the tertiary sector drives traffic. In 2025, all 62 administrative villages in Guangling District achieved operating income exceeding 1 million yuan, and per capita disposable income of rural residents reached 47,265 yuan, ranking first in the city. The dividends of modern agriculture's "connecting the secondary and tertiary sectors" integrated development are genuinely landing in farmers' pockets.

"In the next step, we will build on our urban agriculture advantages to continue driving modern agriculture's 'connecting the secondary and tertiary sectors' toward greater intelligence—making agriculture stronger, rural areas more beautiful, and farmers more prosperous as we stride forward on the path of rural revitalization," said Yang Jian, Director of the Guangling District Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau.