How Qinghai's highland farming is bringing yak milk to Shanghai and vegetables to the Greater Bay Area

Qinghai is leveraging its high-altitude ecology to develop yak, cool-climate vegetables, and goji berries. Yak meat now reaches Shanghai in three days, increasing per-head returns by up to 3,000 yuan. Vegetables from Datong County arrive in the Greater Bay Area within 48 hours, while organic goji berries in Golmud drive hundreds of millions in value.

Source: 人民日报客户端

Qinghai is turning its highland ecology into industrial momentum, focusing on yaks, cool-climate vegetables, and goji berries.

Herder Sonam Dorje in Zhiduo County delivers fresh yak milk daily at 13 yuan per kilogram to Yushu Yak Milk Development Co. The company processes around 5,000 jin of milk per day into yogurt, ghee jelly, and milk tea, and has signed supply agreements with local cooperatives and family ranches, involving 3,765 herder households.

The value of yak meat is also being rediscovered. The Yushu City Comprehensive Industrial Entrepreneurship Logistics Park opened in May 2024 with a total investment of 238 million yuan on 175 mu. The logistics network now delivers fresh yak meat to Shanghai in about three days, raising returns by 2,000 to 3,000 yuan per head. The park hosts 32 processing and trading enterprises, provides stable jobs for over 300 people, and benefits nearly 10,000 herder households.

In the east, Datong County in Xining has charted a new path for highland vegetables. Based on market research, the Datong Jingxing Planting Cooperative switched from traditional cabbage and broccoli to order-based production of pea shoots and choy sum. With cold-chain transport, these vegetables reached the Greater Bay Area within 48 hours of harvest, and the cooperative recorded 5.6 million yuan in sales last year. Datong now has 80,000 mu under cool-climate vegetable cultivation, including three large-scale demonstration zones.

Qinghai's certified organic grassland monitoring area covers 450 million mu, and annual beef and mutton output exceeds 380,000 tonnes. In the first five months of this year, cool-climate vegetable exports reached 2,872.6 tonnes, up 58.5% year-on-year.

In the west, Golmud is moving its goji berry industry up the value chain. Farmer Xu Xianying earned over one million yuan from his 200 mu of organic goji berries last year, and this year 90% of his farming unit has followed his organic approach. Local leading enterprise Golmud Agricultural Reclamation Group manages 57,200 mu of goji berries, 2,586.3 mu of which are organically certified, with total output value exceeding 500 million yuan. The company has introduced color sorters, low-temperature drying, and NFC cold-pressing lines, developing over 50 products, while contract purchases and training have raised average household incomes by about 8,000 yuan.

Province-wide, goji berry acreage stands at 440,000 mu, with output value exceeding 10 billion yuan. Green and organic farming enterprises total 318, generating 16.227 billion yuan in output.