Jinghe County Turns Wolfberries Into a Youth-Led Rural Business

What changed

In Jinghe County, Xinjiang, Kezilejiga’er Village is turning wolfberries from a smallholder crop into a broader local business. A village collective invested more than 1.3 million yuan to convert a disused cultural centre into a 700-square-metre processing plant, while a distillery began operating in 2025 and young returnees started selling the fruit through livestreams.

The shift now covers:

• Fresh-fruit sorting, cold storage, packaging and online sales.
• More than 50,000 boxes sold this year, generating 600,000 yuan in turnover.
• Employment for more than 100 villagers at the plant and nearly 30 at the distillery.
• About 500 tonnes of local wolfberries purchased annually by the distillery.

Why it matters

The important change is not simply that a village found another way to sell goji berries. It is that more of the value is staying close to where the fruit is grown.

Jinghe County cultivated more than 100,000 mu of wolfberries in 2025, producing nearly 60,000 tonnes of fresh fruit and about 1 billion yuan in output. The village plant gives growers a route beyond selling raw produce: fruit can be kept fresh, sorted to a standard, packaged and sold directly. The distillery adds another outlet for the harvest, including fruit that might otherwise have fewer commercial options.

That also changes the kind of work available locally. Thirty-three-year-old villager Zhang Xinyu developed a distilled drink and built the village distillery. Twenty-two-year-old returning graduate Li Chengmei is using livestreams to explain the crop and sell it beyond the county. Her first harvest livestream brought in more than 20,000 yuan.

Jinghe now has nearly 40 wolfberry companies and cooperatives, with more than 80 products including fresh-locked fruit, juice, beer and fermented products. Those goods are exported to 23 countries and regions. The more revealing test will be whether participating villages can turn this combination of processing, direct sales and youth-led marketing into lasting demand, rather than a one-season boost.