Golden autumn brings abundant scenery, and the fragrance of rice fills the fields. Yesterday was the 44th World Food Day, and the activities for the 2024 World Food Day and Food Security Promotion Week in Zhejiang Province were launched in Lishui City.

The theme of World Food Day hold in this year is “Food Security for All: Building Better Lives and a Brighter Future Together”, while the theme for Food Security Promotion Week is “Strengthening the Rule of Law, Ensuring Supply, and Safeguarding Food Security”. The launch ceremony was specially held at the thousand-acre rice and mustard rotation base in Dongfang Town, Jinyun County.

Lishui City is rich in ecological resources, harboring high-quality potential for the food industry. In recent years, Lishui has comprehensively strengthened the foundation of food security, implementing shared responsibilities for food security between the Communist Party and government, and promoting high-quality development in the food sector. The city’s grain planting area has remained stable at 1.104 million acres, with a total grain production exceeding 826 million pounds.

At the same time, Lishui City has also introduced the country’s first local standard for “Green Grain Storage (Temperature Control and Nitrogen Regulation) Technical Specifications”. The city has achieved a controlled atmosphere grain storage capacity of 300,000 tons (out of a total storage capacity of 450,000 tons). It continues to enhance the promotion of quality seeds, machinery, and methods tailored to local conditions, establishing the largest core seed production and supply base for indica hybrid rice in the province. The rice-fish rice from the “Lishui Shangeng” series, Gaoshan 600, NAN LIANG XIANG, and other indica rice brands from southern Zhejiang are widely popular in the market.

Lishui City has innovatively implemented a reserve grain rotation mechanism, enhancing the quality and expanding the modern grain procurement service system, while deeply implementing food-saving actions. The “mobile multi-container cleaning operation line” in Jinyun County was selected as one of the nationwide hundred examples of small inventions, innovations, and ideas for grain storage savings and loss reduction. Additionally, the city actively promotes food security education, establishing one national-level and three provincial-level food security education bases.

Notably, the launch ceremony invited students from Dongfang School in Jinyun County to participate in experiential learning. The students used sickles to experience rice harvesting and threshing, learning agricultural knowledge and appreciating farming culture through their labor.

“It’s hard work to harvest rice; holding the sickle for too long makes my hands sore, and I sweat a lot when it’s hot,” said Xu Chengyan, a fifth-grade student. She told reporters that the experiential learning activity helped her understand the challenges of getting food from the fields to the table, and they will cherish food more in the future, committing to the “clean plate” initiative.

Transforming “good grain” into “good product” is essential for high-quality development. The event showcased the achievements of Lishui’s grain industry chain development, with four representatives introducing notable grain-derived products emerging from the city, such as Yuyue soy sauce of Liandu distirct, rice-fish rice of Qingtian County, sticky rice dumplings of Suichang county, and Jinyun pancakes. The ceremony also presented awards to enterprises producing “Zhejiang Good Grain and Oil” products and issued a public initiative to save and cherish food.

“Leveraging the ecological advantages of ‘Zhejiang Green Valley’, Lishui is solidly advancing the ‘Five Excellence Linkage’ initiative, focusing on production, reserves, processing, and circulation, to make the most of ‘Green Gractices’ as a vivid example and positive outcome of building ‘Green granaries’, providing models and creating experiences for the entire province.” stated a representative from the Zhejiang Provincial Grain and Material Bureau.