Targeting consumer demand for diversified food, Shanxi province is shifting its farming focus to coarse cereals.

Local statistics show that Shanxi's planting area for coarse cereals, including millet, sorghum, buckwheat, oats, quinoa and beans, is approximately 1 million hectares, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the country's total.

One important base for coarse cereals is the city of Xinzhou in the central north of Shanxi. The city was recognized as China's "hub of coarse cereals" by the China National Association of Grain Sector in 2014.

"Xinzhou has more than 20 varieties of coarse cereals," said Wang Aiming, head of the Xinzhou Grain Industry Development Center. "Its total planting area of coarse cereals has surpassed 230,000 hectares, accounting for nearly one-fourth of the provincial total and its total annual output is about 300 million metric tons, about one-third of that of Shanxi."

The official highlighted kidney beans and quinoa, saying their outputs and planting area take up more than 80 percent of the provincial total and more than one-third of the national total.

Wang noted that Xinzhou is home to a number of products with geographical indications, including Xinzhou's sticky corn, yellow millet from Fansi county, naked oats from Ningwu county and red kidney beans from Wuzhai county.

Xinzhou has a long history in growing coarse cereals. However, it is in recent years the coarse cereal sector has developed into a pillar farming industry and a major source of revenue for farmers in Xinzhou, according to local officials.

They said the turning point was the establishment of the Xinzhou Chinese Coarse Cereals Hub Industrial Park in 2018, which made it possible for developing an extended industrial chain for the coarse cereals industry, ranging from research, plantation, processing, logistics, marketing and financing.

A recent development in the park is that it is using blockchain technology to build a product tracing platform for all its products.

"Because the products' quality is traceable, Xinzhou's coarse cereals are gaining increasing popularity among consumers," Wang said. He added that the products have been exported to overseas regions including the United States and Europe.

The county of Kelan in Xinzhou is a pioneer coarse cereal exports.

It was the first county in Shanxi to establish an overall quality control system for its coarse cereal producers, requiring their products to meet internationally advanced quality standards for exporting them to global markets.

The county is now the largest exporter of red kidney beans in China, with an annual export volume of more than 10,000 tons in recent years, according to local officials.

Li Shu contributed to this story.