Rare Chinese medicinal material safflowers, which entered the harvest season recently, has become a new source of income for local people in Weixi Lisu autonomous county of southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Every November to December is the harvest season of safflowers in the county. Local flower farmers were busy picking them these days. The output of safflowers this year is expected to increase by five percent over last year, making average income of the farmers exceed 15,000 yuan (around 2,281.5 U.S. dollars).

In Qizong village of the county, more than 150 mu (10 hectares) of safflowers have entered the full-blossom period. Flower farmer Chen Daoxu was carefully picking filaments out of the flowers.

"The red part is the essence of the flower. We only use the red part as medicine," said Chen.

Chen's family earned their living by growing traditional crops as migrant workers in the past. Due to low earnings of traditional crops on the plateau, the local area began to introduce and grow safflowers on a trial basis in 2011. Chen learned carefully from technical staff and started planting safflowers in 2015. So far this year, one mu (0.07 hectares) of safflowers brought her family nearly 20,000 yuan (around 3,042 U.S. dollars) of income.

With the increase of safflower growers in the local area, flower farmers have also established a cooperative. The relevant companies offered free safflower seed balls, greenhouses and technical management, and contracted to purchase safflowers to guarantee the earning of flower farmers.

"So far, the earning of local people has been more than 15,000 yuan (around 2,282 U.S. dollars) per mu. In the next few years, our planting scale will rise to 1,000 mu (about 66.7 hectares) to bring more benefits to more farmers and local people," said He Shouying, the person in charge of the cooperative.