On first arriving in Anqiu, the large trucks passing continuously outside the car window quickly reveal what makes this major agricultural county in Shandong stand out. The large English letters MAERSK and COSCO on their bodies prominently indicate their identity as ocean shipping containers; at the intersections, these massive container trucks coming and going from north to south also show the prosperity of commercial trade here. At this moment, the roadside slogan "The World's Vegetable Basket" and the title of "China's Number One Vegetable Export County" become intuitive and concrete. These scenes benefit not only from what the municipal party secretary called "a single highway toll station waiving over 100 million yuan in tolls for fresh agricultural products last year," but also from what the supervising official called the foundation of "one village, one product; one town, one industry"—thus, Linghe's ginger, Huiqu's scallions, Guanzhuang's garlic, Zheshan's sweet potatoes, Shibuzi's peaches... all make their way to every corner of the country, to over 90 countries and regions including Japan, South Korea, Europe, and America. A county-level city thus integrates into the global supply chain of taste.

Grapes in the farm / Photo by interviewee. For local development, sustained cultivation in agriculture is not a given. For 30 years, building "strong industrial counties" and "strong industrial cities" has been the focus of economic work for many local governments in China. The large-scale employment, GDP, and tax revenue created by industry play a pivotal role in local development; on the other side, abolishing agricultural taxes to reduce farmers' burdens further weakened agriculture's fiscal incentives for local governments. Farming became a thankless drudgery that many tacitly acknowledged as "important but spending money without earning it." In terms of social status, farmers and agriculture have also been marginalized for years. Farmers rise early and work late in the fields, hoping their children will no longer depend on the yellow earth for a living—agriculture thus became an industry that "neither father nor mother loves." But in Anqiu, even a newcomer can feel how deeply agriculture is rooted in this land. It is a market atmosphere different from industrial towns: on township streets, agricultural product cold storage, farmers' markets, and agricultural supply stores line the streets, with agricultural support facilities densely packed; in the urban area, agricultural-related management and service institutions are also concentrated and prominent. In a half-old factory building, when asked, the owner has been in business for over 20 years, and he is the supplier of pumpkin slices for Japan's 7-Eleven convenience stores... At the Anqiu Agricultural Exhibition Hall, a telegram shows that as early as the early days of New China, Anqiu's large yellow bud cabbage, scallions, and other agricultural products were "exported" overseas as birthday gifts for Stalin / Nanfengchuang, Shi Jingjing photo. In Anqiu, agriculture is not a sunset industry; in choosing its development path, Anqiu did not easily change course. This tests the vision and judgment of local leaders. Speaking of Anqiu's development approach, Municipal Party Secretary Qiao Risheng told Nanfengchuang: "Whether it's industry, agriculture, or services, we need to be like an old Chinese doctor—understand what a place is suited for, what can unleash productivity, what can increase people's incomes, and what can gather local vitality." For Anqiu, from primarily producing fresh raw materials, to now where the food industry's output value occupies half the economy, to promoting organic ecological agriculture county-wide to highlight quality, agriculture is a development path that keeps extending forward. Amid the wave of industrialization, this steadfastness is not entirely because "natural endowments dictate it." In late August, Nanfengchuang traveled to Anqiu. When interacting with farmers, business owners, and officials, one reaction was unexpected. They all proactively mentioned food safety incidents like formaldehyde cabbage and drug-soaked bayberries. Their priority concern for "quality and safety" rather than "economic accounts" seemed unusual—and this is precisely the crux that Anqiu has hit upon in local practice. Under the guidance of both market and government hands, this work has become a key starting point. What Anqiu ultimately seeks to answer is a broader development question: When industry becomes the main axis of county economy, can agriculture still become a competitive income-generating industry, giving farmers and the locality opportunities for development and dignity?

A long struggle with pesticide residues. When Wu Weidong first walked into a Japanese supermarket, he was shocked by the price of scallions on the shelf. That was 1996. Recalling it, Wu Weidong still clicks his tongue in wonder: "Those scallions were very expensive." Three scallions sold for 25 yuan RMB; in Anqiu at that time, that money could buy enough scallions to fill the back of a small tractor. In an era when foreign trade was still novel, Wu Weidong did vegetable export business for three years and tasted the first cup of soup. But standing in front of the Japanese supermarket shelf, he witnessed for the first time what price ginger, scallions, and garlic collected from his hometown fields could sell for across the sea. The huge price difference meant tempting business opportunities. Business opportunities quickly amplified with China's "WTO accession," and Anqiu also seized the opening window of the global market, sending more and more vegetables to the world. At its peak, Wu Weidong would ship at least a dozen containers a week. At first, everything seemed easy, but when the wave rises high, it falls just as painfully. In 2006, Japan implemented the "Positive List System for Agricultural Chemical Residues in Food," tightening regulation of pesticide residues in imported food. Suddenly, large quantities of Chinese exported agricultural products were returned due to excessive pesticide residues, causing heavy losses for enterprises. After the 2008 Hebei "poisonous dumpling" incident, Japan's trust in Chinese food plummeted, also affecting Anqiu. For Wu Weidong, "couldn't even sell half a container, instantly hitting us to rock bottom." A slogan on the wall of a roadside agricultural supply store in Anqiu reminds: Change planting habits. In Anqiu, reducing chemical fertilizer and increasing organic fertilizer has become one of the county-wide advocacy directions / Nanfengchuang, Shi Jingjing photo. These distant food safety incident lessons remain profound, and recent domestic formaldehyde cabbage and drug-soaked bayberry scandals are similar, causing the entire industry to suffer together. Wu Weidong personally experienced the market's survival of the fittest and fully realized that food safety is not just a personal moral issue—it concerns enterprise survival, industry rise and fall, and affects a region's economic lifeline. For Anqiu, the external pressure of export order cancellations would not automatically bring a more orderly market. Neither heavily punishing a single violating enterprise to warn others nor switching to exporting to countries with laxer regulatory standards is a long-term solution. Therefore, the test facing Anqiu is: How to convert external market pressure into internal public governance capacity, do what is right in the long term—transmit quality and safety standards along the supply chain all the way to the fields, so that "the entire production area" produces vegetables that can withstand market scrutiny. In the national standards library, there is a current national standard: "Requirements for Regionalized Safety Management System of Primary Agricultural Products." As a county-level city, Anqiu is among the main drafting units, which is rare. As early as 2007, Anqiu took the lead nationwide in piloting a regionalized quality and safety construction system for exported food and agricultural products, advancing safety and quality management from "product" to "production area": incorporating soil, water sources, fertilizers, and pesticides—regional elements invisible to consumers—into the regulatory scope. When tracing Anqiu's agricultural development, multiple witnesses believe this pilot was indispensable. Liu Yuquan is one of them. He is not a local of Anqiu, but invested in a food processing factory in Anqiu, and the agricultural raw materials used also mainly come from Anqiu. Over 20 years, he has turned many overseas listed companies into clients. The driving force is that after implementing regionalized management, using export standards to force control of pesticide residues, Anqiu's agricultural product quality has significantly improved. "You no longer need to run around and still can't find suitable products—Anqiu is the best choice." Anqiu's strawberries / Photo by interviewee. In Anqiu, the Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Management Service Center plays the role of "gatekeeper." Nationwide, this institution is not unusual; it is typically a subordinate unit of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau. But in Anqiu, this institution's rank is extraordinary—it was "deputy county-level" from the start. This means its administrative level is higher than functional departments like the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau and the Market Supervision Bureau. In a county-level city, separating agricultural product quality and safety affairs into its own institution is not a conventional arrangement, and its responsibilities are not just routine laboratory pesticide residue testing. The center's party secretary Liu Binggang is also different from many officials. During the interview, he eagerly discussed many issues of "laws not keeping pace" and "mechanism constraints during implementation": "Why do I dare say these things? (Because) this area has now severely constrained our high-quality development." His perspective on the pain point is not the tool of "testing" but the capacity of "supervision." "Why has food safety been hard to solve all these years? Actually, supervision hasn't formed a synergy," he said. Anqiu's Agricultural Safety Center is precisely an adaptation and innovation forced by circumstances: it uses a coordinating status higher than administrative departments to solve the problem of departments and their respective laws not linking hands and supervision being hard to implement; as a deputy county-level institution, it directly provides decision-making reference to the top leadership, breaking through the constraint of lacking law enforcement power. "Agricultural product quality and safety is first produced, and second, managed," Liu Binggang said. This understanding means supervision does not wait until vegetables leave the field and enter the market for after-the-fact judgment, but moves forward into the production process, preventing from the source. "Production must be controlled. Testing is the most effective, and valid data is the most critical," he said bluntly. "Data that is cobbled together is all just decoration." In Anqiu's digital supervision platform for agricultural product quality and safety, data relies on 108 agricultural safety officers' daily field surveys, sampling, and state-owned laboratory testing. The requirements are quite detailed: positioning can only succeed within 50 meters of the target plot, and the phone automatically records latitude and longitude; sampling photos must mutually corroborate with the on-site environment; the same plot cannot be sampled repeatedly on the same day to "pad numbers"; crops must be tested while growing in the field and tested again before harvest. Collected test samples are sent daily to the state-owned inspection and testing center laboratory for "high-throughput rapid screening + quantitative verification." Ultimately, test results are linked in the backend with specific plot, village, and producer information, forming traceable data, and problems found are publicly announced in the village. In Anqiu, many large-scale growers use information technology to manage greenhouses / Nanfengchuang, Shi Jingjing photo. Liu Binggang repeatedly emphasizes "valid" data because it concerns the effectiveness and credibility of supervision. Whenever food safety incidents are exposed, the government is often questioned for inadequate supervision, and since it is a stakeholder in local development achievements, the public would rather trust external third-party testing data. But Liu Binggang points out a blind spot: data detected by third-party testing institutions is hard for the government to systematically grasp and cannot be used for effective analysis and judgment. "Many third parties are corporate market behaviors. Third parties themselves also need to be supervised, but no one supervises the third parties." "The government must have its own data, must know its own numbers," Liu Binggang said. If the government cannot even grasp basic data and risk conditions, it is hard to judge whether the results provided by third parties are genuine risk information or just a pretty "certificate of compliance." Whether data is credible is not about "who said it"—the key is that it can be repeatedly verified. For Anqiu, the Agricultural Safety Center is the "gatekeeper," allowing data to be traced from the source; at customs, importing countries' monitoring also provides consistency verification. When the two match like tiger tallies, Anqiu's vegetables have a chance to circulate in the world. Building this supervision system was not achieved overnight. Liu Binggang said every piece of data was hard-won. In earlier years, farmers were not used to being supervised and were unwilling to take advice on fertilizing and spraying. When staff went to the fields, they were not welcomed, and many farmers were resistant. But now, these are things of the past. Problem agricultural products no longer require destruction and fines, but rely on public disclosure and consensus. Everyone gradually realized that supervisors and the supervised are actually a community of shared interests. After crossing the quality and safety hurdle, another question is: How can good products stand out and gain price competitiveness? Can good products sell for a good price? In the greenhouse base, grower Wang Baojie mentioned a Henan couple he met a few days ago. The two brought a truck of ginger to Anqiu but couldn't sell it. Discussing the market, Wang Baojie said his ginger could now sell for 5 yuan per catty. The couple was surprised because this year's ginger prices are sluggish—the market price is 1 yuan per catty. They didn't understand why his ginger could sell so expensive. Wang Baojie brought out a stack of production files. He showed these files to the couple and to many cooperative clients. He flipped through them one by one, pointing out that this was the previous planting plan for exporting to Japan, that one was for green food, and the organic planting plan. Inside, how many times to water per season, how many times to fertilize, what to use each time, how much to use—all must be recorded; greenhouse temperature, humidity, facility operations, fertilization status also must be recorded; even which plot, which worker, what was done on which day, how much labor fee was paid—all have traces. These records seem trivial, but they are enough to let buyers know how Wang Baojie's products differ from others and why they deserve a higher price. "We don't simply earn money. According to domestic order clients' (requirements) and foreign market demands, we choose different management models," Wang Baojie said. After the couple saw them, they said: We want to follow you and plant. Based on different order clients' needs, Wang Baojie's farm has corresponding planting plans, specific to water use, fertilization, pesticide use, manual operations, and other steps / Nanfengchuang, Shi Jingjing photo. Wang Baojie didn't find the way from the start. In 11 years of entrepreneurship, like many farmers, he always worried about two problems: growing good products but no one knowing, and hard to sell at a good price. Only in recent years has he gained confidence. Benefiting from Anqiu's external promotion and quality endorsement, a few years ago it was "growing then worrying about selling," now leading enterprises come knocking one after another, "before it's even grown, people come to buy," and purchase prices are above market rates—when quoting the price figures, Wang Baojie couldn't stop smiling. It was also in this process that what he once feared were just government slogans—"ecological agriculture," "organic planting," "be among the 20% in the 80/20 rule"—became a worthwhile deal. On different farms in Anqiu, from Meizao large cherries at 500 yuan per catty, to Anqiu honey peaches at 60 yuan for 9 that evoke childhood flavors, to strawberries that won an industry gold award in their second trial year, even organic chives at 100 yuan per catty—there's something for every budget, yet there are always people willing to pay. A path determined by quality rather than price competition has been opened. They have also become positive examples of Anqiu targeting international markets and domestic high-end markets. Li Jinguang's family farm began growing strawberries in 2025, among which organic strawberries can sell for over 100 yuan per catty. The selected "Salt Berry No. 1" won a gold award at the Hangzhou World Strawberry Expo / Photo by interviewee. In a roadside agricultural supply store, several small farmers described circumstances that form two sides of the same coin compared to the new farmers mentioned above. Behind the phrase "things aren't worth money this year," farmers can be happy for half a day over earning one extra cent. Whether to store or sell, timing is a survival strategy. When the market is sluggish, the water and fertilizer for the new season's crops are discounted. If unwilling to spend more on costs, they let crops fend for themselves, then look for new opportunities or wait for the cycle to turn. One older man joked, "Farmers are gambling with the land." This exposes a negative cycle that agriculture easily falls into: poor prices, farmers reduce input; reduced input means product quality becomes uncontrollable; to recover costs, they can only continue competing on price; the lower the price, the less willing they are to invest again. Xiaode Shanzhuang ecological farm owner Hao Lianyun packing honey peaches / Photo by interviewee. Wu Weidong, who has also farmed for export vegetables, deeply feels that cheap vegetables hurt farmers. He said: "Chinese agricultural products are too cheap. The hardship farmers endure is disproportionate to the returns." Grain prices are low, so farmers switch to vegetables; vegetables become profitable, more people follow; supply increases, prices fall again; thus "farmers don't earn from grain, nor from vegetables." Chasing rallies and dumping declines, low-price competition—this is the collective dilemma of small farmers. When new farmers use scale, technology, data, and standards to proactively connect to market pre-orders, more traditional small farmers still rely on experience, detached from the market, and can be undercut at any time. People used to understand agriculture as a low-tech, low-investment, experience-based industry, but greenhouse facility agriculture breaks the stereotype. It requires equipment, technology, data, professionals, and capital for trial and error. Standardizing farming is no lighter than industry, and risks are amplified by scale. Wang Baojie demonstrates that he can grasp farm parameters via mobile phone and adjust accordingly to approach standardized production / Nanfengchuang, Shi Jingjing photo. Wu Weidong caught the golden age of vegetable processing and export, but in farming, he tasted little sweetness. He contracted over a thousand mu of land across provinces, but "most of the money was thrown into the ground." The setbacks in farming gave Wu Weidong a more cautious understanding of scale. Anqiu's promotion of family farms is progress; moderate scale makes mechanization, unified standards, centralized procurement, and contract farming easier. But scale can dilute some costs, yet cannot eliminate external risks. He said that for Chinese farmers who lost collective organizational power after the household contract responsibility system, the key is not the size of scale, but that farmers need to be organized and agriculture needs support. "Caring about agriculture is giving farmers a share of the bowl," Wu Weidong said.

Increasing farmers' income. As Anqiu's top leader, Municipal Party Secretary Qiao Risheng wants to solve two core issues concerning agricultural development: letting people eat more safely and nutritiously, and increasing farmers' income. The two issues are not isolated. It requires the government not only to understand supervision but also to be good at public services. In Anqiu, many people repeatedly mention this saying: Soil is the root and soul of agriculture. Qiao Risheng is also devoted to this. He has compared differences in soil organic matter content across countries, cares about the damage of herbicides to soil ecology, and pays attention to the pollution of groundwater and drinking water sources by excessive chemical fertilizers. "Our land can still sustain now. If we don't protect it, future Chinese land will be impossible to explain to future generations." In Qiao Risheng's view, in the past, relying on chemical fertilizers to increase output, Chinese people solved the problem of "eating enough." Now it has reached the stage of reducing chemical fertilizer input and replacing with organic fertilizer. He began promoting a "soil reform" in Anqiu, using organic fertilizer to nourish soil, improve agricultural product quality, and boost farmers' income. He said, "The vitality of soil and its output value and income are of the same lineage." Reducing chemical fertilizer and increasing organic fertilizer, developing organic vegetables—national ministries and agricultural experts have advocated this for years, but for a time, farmers' enthusiasm was not high. Among the concerns, organic fertilizer being expensive is a major one. To this end, in 2025, a state-owned enterprise specializing in organic fertilizer, Herunfeng Geng Biological Engineering Co., Ltd., was established in Anqiu, freely collecting and transporting manure from local livestock farms, producing organic fertilizer, and delivering it to fields. Qiao Risheng took the lead in organizing expert assessments. Ultimately, with government subsidies, the price of organic fertilizer was set at a minimum of 200 yuan per ton for break-even operation, far below market price and even cheaper than some chemical fertilizers. Herunfeng Geng's general manager displays soil samples from different areas of Anqiu; fertilization also needs to adapt to local conditions / Nanfengchuang, Shi Jingjing photo. Herunfeng Geng's chairman Ma Yuyou told Nanfengchuang: "We neither profit nor lose. In fact, we charge a socialized service fee; what we sell is not fertilizer." In Shibuzi Town, peach grower Hao Lianyun is a major buyer of organic fertilizer. "Now it's 3 tons of organic fertilizer per mu," she said. The growth is gratifying, yield hasn't decreased, and the peaches taste good. The plate of peaches on her coffee table, with greenish skin, didn't stand out at first. Not counting shipping, a box of 9 sells for 60 yuan. After one taste, an Anqiu local beside her got a bit excited, saying the dense, sweet flavor was the taste of childhood—the "Anqiu honey peach" that had disappeared for years and come back to life. Hao Lianyun, a middle-aged woman who once did odd jobs at construction sites, now tends a peach orchard. The orchard got on track and caught a good market, and working from dawn to dusk, she earns a million a year. Anqiu honey peaches from Hao Lianyun's Xiaode Shanzhuang, with a sweet, soft, and glutinous taste / Nanfengchuang, Shi Jingjing photo. Last year, organic fertilizer promotion expanded county-wide. Organic fertilizer at 200 yuan per ton became a special agricultural input supply in Anqiu. Qiao Risheng hopes farmers can protect soil as they protect life, "realizing what kind of soil can grow what kind of agricultural products and sell for what kind of price." From organic fertilizer supply, pesticide residue testing, risk early warning for changes in export standards, to linking technical experts for various categories, market promotion, to quality certification, building farmland water conservancy facilities—all are filling in public services that markets and individuals cannot obtain alone, and all require real government investment. Anqiu's finances are not ample. For county development, helping farmers farm and increase income does not generate direct tax revenue like industry. Instead, it requires large subsidies, tax and fee reductions, loan support, and socialized services. For Anqiu, how does increasing farmers' income create incentives for the locality and generate economic value? "The economic growth point is still in agriculture and rural areas. China still has hundreds of millions of farmers. Only when they have money can they together drive consumption, and the economy can come alive. This group cannot be ignored. So we must enable them to earn money and think about how to increase their income. This is our core affair. There is still great room for increasing people's income," Qiao Risheng said. Looking further, if agriculture and farmers' incomes don't increase, rural labor is insufficient, and the pain point of "who will farm the land" will be hard to solve. College student farms, village collective farms, large-scale managed farms—there must always be new faces, letting more people see hope in agriculture. Wang Yaru is a post-90s college student who now takes over her family's farm. Her family's organic carrots were once directly supplied to the Beijing Winter Olympics / Nanfengchuang, Shi Jingjing photo. Only by increasing farmers' income will "agricultural modernization" in policy documents not become an empty slogan; it must land on farmers' livelihoods. In Anqiu, when speaking of their original intention to engage in agriculture, even in middle age, they often call themselves "children of farmers." Their affection for the land and their dedication to food are moving. In a farmhouse restaurant in Anqiu's Jingzhi, there is a special staple food on the table called three-page pancake. Three pages combined into one, thin as paper, shaking it opens into three. A folk rhyme says: Wine banners along the road, camel bells fill the street, guests from all directions, all eat three-page pancakes. Locals eat it by "rolling"—spread flat on the hand, at the table, meat, eggs, vegetables, the big pancake rolls everything, one pancake three ways to eat, free combination. This is a way of eating that only a land of abundance would have. Putting down chopsticks, rolling it up and putting it into the mouth, at that moment, everyone looks more satisfied than usual when eating—a satisfaction that comes from the gift of the land. The first image in the article is provided by the interviewee.