At six in the morning, the tea gardens in Wangying Town, Lichuan City, Enshi Prefecture, Hubei Province are still shrouded in mist, but tea farmer Lao Tan has already received three notifications on his phone: the fresh leaf purchase price in Qianjiang District, Chongqing; the real-time location of logistics vehicles at the Hubei-Chongqing border; and precise weather warnings for the next 48 hours. This mountainous area, once information-isolated due to its location at the junction of Hubei, Chongqing, and Hunan, is now being thoroughly activated by an invisible big data network.

"Selling tea used to depend on luck, now it depends on algorithms," said Lao Tan, pointing to the fluctuating curves on the screen. The "algorithm" he refers to is precisely the first agricultural product big data platform in the tri-provincial border zone, built by the local agricultural technology enterprise "Youyoucao E-Yu." Named after the dialect term "Youyoucao" (meaning tenaciously growing wild grass) from the Hubei-Chongqing-Hunan border area, this project is using data flows to break down the economic barriers created by administrative boundaries.

At the Lichuan Big Data Operations Center, reporters saw on a giant electronic screen dots of light jumping along a network intertwined with Yangtze River tributaries and the Wuling Mountains—these represent real-time updated logistics trajectories, soil moisture monitoring values, and cross-provincial transaction data. Platform director Li Weiran revealed that the system has already connected over 2,000 new agricultural entities across 7 districts and counties in the Hubei-Chongqing-Hunan border area. "We don't just do simple data aggregation," she said. "Instead, we use algorithmic models to predict demand fluctuations in the three provinces' markets, issuing planting and harvesting suggestions to producers 72 hours in advance."

This predictive capability was put to a practical test last month. In mid-April, the platform detected an abnormal rise in the hotpot ingredient consumption index in Chongqing, coupled with short-term rainfall forecasts in parts of Hunan. The system immediately issued a "concentrated harvesting 24 hours ahead of schedule" instruction to bamboo shoot cooperatives in Enshi, Hubei, and dispatched 17 refrigerated trucks to standby. Three days later, when the Chongqing market experienced a shortage of local bamboo shoots due to a sudden temperature rise, 32 tons of Enshi high-mountain bamboo shoots had already arrived at major wholesale markets. "This wasn't just about seizing a market window," Li Weiran said. "It was about giving farmers in the border zone market influence for the first time."

Deeper transformation is occurring in the restructuring of the industrial chain. In the past, although the Hubei-Chongqing border zone shared similar ecological resources, homogeneous competition arose due to belonging to different administrative divisions. Now, big data is fostering a new model of "cross-provincial collaborative production." Based on soil composition, climate data, and logistics costs, the platform plans differentiated planting focuses for different counties: Lichuan, Hubei focuses on selenium-rich tea; Shizhu, Chongqing scales up pepper cultivation; and Longshan, Hunan develops high-mountain vegetables. Each production area can view the entire border zone's industrial layout in real-time through the platform, spontaneously forming complementary relationships.

However, the path to data integration has not been smooth. In the project's initial stages, the biggest obstacle was not technology, but differences in data standards across the three regions. "For the same chili pepper, Hubei classifies by spiciness, Chongqing by usage, and Hunan emphasizes appearance indicators," recalled Technical Director Wang Fan. The team spent eight months in repeated consultations with agricultural departments and research institutions from the three areas, ultimately establishing a "Wuling Mountain Characteristic Agricultural Product Data Standard System" covering 137 indicators, which became the foundation for cross-provincial data mutual recognition.

More notably, this enterprise-led platform is triggering subtle changes in grassroots governance models. In Baifusi Town, Laifeng County, the town mayor showed reporters a "Border Affairs Coordination Module" developed based on platform data. When the system detects abnormal livestock and poultry manure treatment indicators at a farm in Longshan County, Hunan, it automatically sends an alert to environmental officers in downstream Laifeng County, Hubei. "In the past, such cross-provincial pollution disputes often had to be reported level by level," he said. "Now, through the data platform, they can be handled proactively."

As the autumn harvest season approaches, the data pool of the Youyoucao E-Yu platform is growing at a rate of 30TB per day. This data not only concerns crop yields and prices but also documents the profound transformation of how hundreds of thousands of farmers in the Wuling Mountain area are shifting from "relying on the heavens for food" to "relying on data for development." Zhang Bo, Director of the Digital Village Research Center at China Agricultural University, commented: "The value of this project lies in the fact that it doesn't simply replicate urban big data models. Instead, it identifies the development pain points of this special region—the inter-provincial border zone—and uses data to stitch together economic units fragmented by administrative divisions."

As night falls, the large screen at the Lichuan Operations Center continues to flicker. On the screen, a new data curve is being generated—a harvesting plan based on demand forecasts for the three provinces' markets over the next week. Deep within the folds of the Wuling Mountains, data cables are extending along the ancient salt and tea trails, redefining the meaning of 'border.'