Women volunteers in Taizhou City, East China's Zhejiang Province, help pick vegetables on a local vegetable farm on March 12. [Taizhou Women's Federation]

"So many crops will rot in the fields if they are not picked. Thank you for your timely help," Xu Haiya, farm owner in a town of Sanmen County, in Taizhou, a city in East China's Zhejiang Province, said to the volunteers.

A group of 10-plus women volunteers led by Wang Yuejun, President of the Taizhou Women's Federation, came to Xu's farm to help pick vegetables on March 12.

The volunteers learned vegetable-picking techniques from Xu, and they harvested more than 250 kilograms of vegetables on that morning.

Learning many local farmers were facing poor sales of agricultural products caused by novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the city's women's federation and the Women's Federation of Sanmen County took actions to promote the sales of agricultural products for villagers in a bid to reduce their losses due to the epidemic.

The county's women's federation took the initiative to offer e-commerce services of selling agricultural products in early February.

The county's federation worked out an innovative model of combining agricultural products supplied directly from planting bases and free delivery services provided by women volunteers, which helped ease the shortage of daily supplies for residents and boosted sales of agricultural products for farmers.

According to Peng Lan, vice-president of the county's federation, more than 100 women, including presidents of the women's federations of townships, towns and sub-districts, government officials, women volunteers and female night guards, have volunteered to work in the delivery team in their spare time.

Thanks to the support of the city's federation and the county's federation, Fang Youqin's aquatic product breeding cooperative survived despite dismal sales during the epidemic period.

She said the online sales promotion and voluntary delivery services solved her actual difficulties.

Up to now, the women volunteers have helped sell and deliver more than 100,000 kilograms of fruits, vegetables and seafood, benefiting over 20,000 households in the county.

The county's federation released information on agricultural products every day via WeChat groups and its official WeChat account. It also facilitated farmers to contact and cooperate with local units and enterprises.

For now, 45 online group purchases have reported a sales of more than 130,000-kilogram agricultural products worth 5.6 million yuan (about US$800,000) through five WeChat groups with a total of 2,000-plus members.

In addition, livestreaming marketing is also used to promote local specialties. A total of 45,000 kilograms of products were sold for more than 200,000 yuan (US $28,576).

Thanks to the multiple measures of the county's federation, including online sales combined with online classes and online display of agricultural specialties, a mode of intelligent management of eco-friendly agriculture is being formed, which will help increase income of local farmers.

(Source: China Women's News/Translated and edited by Women of China)