Maoming has fostered a "five trees, one fish, and one table of dishes" model to develop its agricultural industry this year. The five trees refer to lychees, longans, agarwood, exocarpium citri grandis, and Sanhua plums, the one fish refers to tilapia, while the one table of dishes refers to the pre-prepared dishes industry.

Maoming's lychees have transformed from economic crops to the main industry of its rural vitalization efforts. The city endows its lychee industry with richer, deeper, and broader cultural characteristics. It has held two China Litchi Industry Conferences, while its entire lychee industry chain has achieved an output value of over 10 billion yuan ($1.56 billion).

A man shows off ripe lychees. [Photo/WeChat account: maofabu]

Maoming longans have a history of more than 2,000 years and the city is known as the "hometown of gold medal longans in China." Currently, Maoming longans have a planting area of 780,000 mu (52,000 hectares) in the city, generating an output of 541,700 metric tons and an output value of 3.48 billion yuan.

Longans are harvested in Maoming. [Photo/WeChat account: maofabu]

Dianbai district is known as the hometown of Chinese eaglewood. At present, the planting area of eaglewood in Dianbai exceeds 100,000 mu, and the annual output value exceeds 3 billion yuan.

Maoming's planting area of exocarpium citri grandis is 113,000 mu, and the total output value of the entire industry chain is 4.9 billion yuan, generating 1.2 billion yuan in income for the 350,000 people engaged in the exocarpium citri grandis industry.

The planting area of Maoming Sanhua plums is 305,000 mu, with its total output in 2021 being 305,400 tons, generating 4.69 billion yuan in output value.

Maoming's Sanhua plums. [Photo/WeChat account: maofabu]

Maoming tilapia farming covers about 260,000 mu, with an output of 235,600 tons, accounting for about one-third of the total output of tilapia in Guangdong province and generating a comprehensive output value of 7.49 billion yuan. At present, Maoming tilapia is exported to 49 foreign countries and regions.

At present, Maoming has 33 pre-prepared dishes processing enterprises above designated size, with an annual output of about 118,500 tons and an annual output value of about 3.4 billion yuan. The pre-prepared dishes processing enterprises above state designated size mainly focus on the processing of aquatic products like seafood, freshwater fish, and shrimp. They are mainly concentrated in Dianbai district, Maonan district, and the county-level city Huazhou.