On Wednesday, President Xi Jinping made an inspection trip to Dezhou, Shandong Province. It was a trip he made specifically to see how summer farm work was going, check out the fields, and spend time with the villagers.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, walks into a farmland and has cordial exchanges with grain growers, farming machinery operators and agricultural technicians in Dongyujia Village of Lingcheng District in Dezhou City, East China's Shandong Province, June 24, 2026. (Photo: Xinhua)

Along an irrigation canal bordering the fields at Dongyujia village, Xi paused to examine a drip irrigation system that integrates water and fertilizer. The system incorporates black drip lines that run neatly between the rows in the wheat fields.

The technology is helping farmers use both water and fertilizer more efficiently, a staff member from a local agricultural technology center explained. The system can also provide extra moisture to help corn stay cool under extreme heat, giving farmers greater flexibility in managing their fields, she added.

Right on the spot, Xi emphasized the importance of high-standard farmland and said: "I've stressed that the country's total area of farmland must not fall below the red line of 1.8 billion mu (120 million hectares) and that all prime farmland must be reserved for grain production. Why is that?"

"Because no matter how modernized our country becomes, we must rely on ourselves to feed our people. With a population of 1.4 billion, we cannot depend on anyone else. We must keep a focus on grain production."