China Launches National Data platform To Digitize Rice Industry Chain

Xi prioritized the use of saline-alkali land, leveraging scientific and technological innovation, expanding cultivation area, and developing intensive processing of farm products.

China Launches National Data platform To Digitize Rice Industry Chain

Xi Jinping visited a wheat field in Cangzhou City, North China, and asked farmers and agricultural technicians about the output, price, quality and earnings of the crops. Xi prioritized the use of saline-alkali land, leveraging scientific and technological innovation, expanding cultivation area, and developing intensive processing of farm products.

The field is now covered with thick vegetation that can withstand both low rainfall and high alkalinity. Saline and alkaline soil is considered an “incurable disease” due to its low yielding qualities, making it unlikely that wheat will yield a high yield for many years.

Saline-alkali land in China totals about 1.5 billion mu (100 million hectares), of which 500 million mu are usable.

Agricultural technicians have always had a difficult time managing and using the land because it has the potential to be a resource for ensuring the nation’s food security. In actuality, this is not the first time Xi has given the salinity-alkali land his full attention.

The comprehensive use of saline-alkaline soil is of strategic importance to national food security, according to Xi, who made the statement in October 2021 while on an inspection tour of Shandong Province in East China and stopping by the Agricultural High-tech Industrial Demonstration Area of the Yellow River Delta.

Xi has aspired to ensure China’s food supply by utilising technological prowess in agricultural science because he spent his formative years in the remote, rugged village of Liangjiahe in northwest China. Because of this, Xi is aware of what it is like to truly be hungry.

Before the 2020 “”I lived as a farmer for six or seven years,” Xi recalled his years as an educated youth in Liangjiahe. On an empty stomach, I once inquired about the characteristics of the ideal life.”

“They claimed that the first thing they needed was enough chaff to feed themselves and stop begging. Second, they yearned for grains like sorghum, rice, and corn meal. Third, and what at the time seemed like an impossible dream, was to always have rice and flour on the table, along with a regular meal of meat.” Then he urged the farmers to have bigger dreams.

The farmers laughed, “Carrying a golden shoulder pole to the field in the future.” “I think we’re also close to achieving the goal. Agricultural modernization, as I understood it, is the “golden shoulder pole,” “said Xi.

Xi has been focusing on agricultural modernization and advancing agricultural science and technology, speaking with farmers and agricultural technicians, and giving instructions.

He examined unique varieties resistant to high alkalinity and drought to boost farmers’ income and increase yield. He emphasised that farmers should be able to use the best technology to grow top-quality grains.

According to data, China has consistently produced more than 650 million tonnes of grain each year, thanks to the rapid advancement of agricultural science and technology. The contribution of agricultural science and technology in China has increased 7 percentage points to over 61 percent over the last ten years.