Monorails connect mountains to markets in China

The steep mountainsides of Yunnan province are green with orchards that supply sweet mangoes to eager shoppers across China. But getting the fruit to markets in the valleys is not a straightforward matter.

Most farm vehicles can’t navigate the terrain, leaving farmers to carry heavy baskets down steep slopes themselves or hire expensive labourers. The mangoes often lose their freshness by the time they reach the market, cutting further into profits.

In Huaping County, a newly installed monorail system is bridging the gap – and transforming communities in the process.

Transporting rural youth home

With so much hard and time-consuming labour needed to make even small returns, it’s no wonder that many of rural Huaping’s young people once simply left to find work in the cities.

Xie Fanghua was among them. He seized the chance to go to Kunming, the provincial capital, to gain vocational training and find a high-paying job.

But on a visit home to his parents, he noticed the difficulties farmers faced in getting their fruit to market – and spotted an opportunity to return to his roots. Xie left his city job and founded the Lijiang Fangyuan Agricultural Technology Development Company to devise solutions to his community’s problems.

At first introducing a cable transportation scheme, Xie refined his ideas until he had developed the perfect solution to Huaping’s challenging terrain: a monorail system. His company laid custom-designed tracks starting from the points where harvested mangoes are sorted and packed, and ending at unloading points from which they can be transported.

Today, a small train runs semi-automatically along the tracks, packed with fruit that it transports safely and efficiently down the mountainside.

Spreading connectivity

Seeing the change the monorail made in his own community, Xie was determined to make his technology accessible to other farmers who needed it. With a 1.15 million-yuan (US$158,000) loan from IFAD’s Y2RDP initiative matching his company’s own investment, Xie set up a 350 m2 facility in 2023 to expand production.

The demand was immediate. Within a year, over 20,000 metres of track had been laid and were in use by 100 farmers. Y2RDP subsidies enabled farmers to purchase the system at a third below the market rate, while registered low-income farmers paid even less.

While larger or more isolated orchards may set up their own systems, farmers with adjacent orchards often share a train to reduce costs. They pay a small service fee to cover the costs of purchase, operation, maintenance and fuel.

The monorails have also created jobs, while support services such as professional weeding have sprung up around them. Best of all, as farmers increase their own incomes, agriculture is finally becoming an appealing option for young people in Huaping.

“In Yunnan, there’s no terrain challenge we can’t solve when it comes to transportation,” says Xie, now 36 years old. “Our goal is to serve more fruit-growing locations and drive the development of the agricultural industry.”