CCTV News (Focus Interview): From the soil to the bowl, a grain of grain must pass through four passes: the soil must be maintained, the field must be circulated, the storage must be reduced, and the table must be conserved. These four gates are also four accounts - not only economic accounts, but also ecological accounts and carbon emission accounts. What low-carbon codes are hidden in each of these four gates? Let's follow a grain of grain and go take a look.
It takes more than 100 days to go from a seed to a bowl of rice. The starting point of the journey is cultivated land. Whether a piece of cultivated land is good or not depends not only on how much grain can be harvested this year, but also on whether it is healthy and resilient - whether it can withstand disaster years and whether it can repair itself after being damaged. In order to improve the health and resilience of farmland, researchers moved their laboratories to the fields. The people who do the "annual physical examination" for the land are the scientific researchers of the national key research and development projects.
Mao Lili, associate researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Environment and Sustainable Development, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences: "Measure its pH value and conductivity. The pH value represents the acidity and alkalinity of the soil. The nitrate nitrogen and ammonium nitrogen in the soil are very important indicators representing soil fertility. They are all within the normal range."
The phrase "the indicators are normal" does not come easily. Wuchuan County is located at the northern foot of Yinshan Mountain, suffering from drought and strong winds, and most of its cultivated land is of medium-low yield. In order to collect more grain, more and more chemical fertilizers and pesticides have been used in the fields in the past few years.
The deeper root of the disease lies in the land itself - the soil has been "sickened by overwork" due to years of intensive farming. Wuchuan's plight is only a microcosm of the country's entire country: medium- and low-yield fields account for about two-thirds of the total cultivated land in my country.
Cultivated land is the first step in the green and low-carbon transformation of agriculture. Only when cultivated land is well maintained can food production be confident; when chemical fertilizers and pesticides are reduced, carbon emissions can be reduced. Reducing chemical inputs and relying on biological means to restore soil fertility is the core logic of the green and low-carbon transformation of farmland. In order to solve this problem, during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the country established a key research and development project - "Collaborative Technology and Demonstration of Soil Health Maintenance and Production Capacity Improvement in Medium and Low-yield Fields in Northern Dry Farming Areas."
Project leader Mei Xurong, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Environment and Sustainable Development of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences: "Our technology integrates soil technology, fertilizer technology and biological live inoculant technology."
How do technologies integrate? The project research team has prescribed three "prescriptions".
Zhang Jun, a researcher at the Academy of Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Sciences of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region: "First, we developed a smart fertilization system, which reduced the amount of fertilizer by about 9%; second, we used organic fertilizer to replace chemical fertilizer technology, with a replacement ratio of about 20%; third, we used live bacteria technology to ferment the bacteria on site and apply it directly through drip irrigation."
Among the three "prescriptions", the core "medicine" is invisible to the naked eye. It is a living microorganism. Allowing the bacteria to truly "live" into the soil is the most unique innovation of this project. Live bacteria seep into the cultivated layer along the drip irrigation water, decomposing phosphorus and releasing potassium, inhibiting diseases, and improving soil fertility.
After the integration of various technologies, the amount of chemical fertilizers has been significantly reduced. Fertilizer production is a high-energy-consuming industry. The production process consumes a large amount of coal and electricity and produces carbon emissions. Nitrogen fertilizer applied to the soil cannot be fully absorbed by crops, and the excess will be converted into greenhouse gases. Therefore, reducing the use of chemical fertilizers not only reduces planting costs, but also directly reduces greenhouse gas emissions. This is the most basic step in the green and low-carbon transformation of agriculture. Being green is not only about reducing the amount of chemical fertilizers, but also about the greenness and health of crops.
Mei Xurong: "Why do we emphasize green? The first inoculants invested are green inputs, which can save a lot of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and solve the source of pollution from the source. Through the combination of technologies like ours, some green and high-quality agricultural products will be supplied to the market."
At present, this technical model has been promoted to a total of 2.78 million acres in Shanxi, Gansu, Inner Mongolia and other places.
After nourishing the soil, the next stop for food is the fields. There, planting and raising should form a cycle.
Leaving the dry land of Wuchuan, we came to a paddy field in the Songnen Plain in the northeast. In the fields, crabs and crayfish crawl for food, clear young grass, and prey on insect eggs. Their excrement also provides natural fertilizer for the rice. This is the "rice crab symbiosis."
Crabs and shrimps act as "field stewards", and pesticides and chemical fertilizers are put aside. Ecological accounts cannot be calculated based on feelings. Scientific researchers set up greenhouse gas collection static boxes in the fields, collect samples regularly, and turn the "ecological cycle" into a measurable account.
Zhang Yan, a member of the saline-alkali land management project team of the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agricultural Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences: "Through long-term positioning observations, our preliminary conclusion is that reducing chemical fertilizers, replacing organic fertilizers, and raising crabs and shrimps in rice fields can reduce greenhouse gas emissions in rice fields and increase soil organic matter content."
According to estimates, the use of chemical fertilizers in rice fields with rice crab symbiosis can be reduced by 20%, and the use of pesticides can be reduced by more than 70%.
In October, harvesters drive through the rice fields, and the rice is threshed, loaded onto trucks, and transported to the drying center. The straw is also bundled, loaded into trucks, and transported to a beef cattle breeding base ten kilometers away. In the processing workshop, the straw is crushed, mixed, and inoculants are added to turn it into feed.
Ding Yanchao, the person in charge of a livestock company in Jilin: "After the people harvest the grain from the fields, the straw becomes waste. We take it back and let the cattle eat it, thus turning the straw into meat."
This cattle farm alone collects and stores about 30,000 tons of straw from surrounding cooperatives a year, which not only avoids the pollution of straw burning, but also saves feed money. Cows will grow meat after eating straw and will also excrete it. Here, cow dung is mixed with straw and fungi in proportion to make organic fertilizer, which is then transported back to the rice fields and spread into the soil. The rice feeds the crabs, the crabs protect the rice, the straw feeds the cows, and the cow dung fertilizes the fields—the small cycle is in the field, and the large cycle is outside the field, and they are linked together.
Sun Qixin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering: "The major change in adopting the development method of green circular agriculture is to treat the past as waste, turn it into resources through resource reuse, and reinvest it into the agricultural recycling system. By using the technical routes and means of circular agriculture development, we can better achieve the goal of green development."
After the field cycle, the next stop is the granary. In the drying center, hot air removes excess moisture from the grain until it reaches the standard for safe storage. In the nationwide grain storage network, grains are gradually moving into their respective "homes".
In Changsha, Hunan, five white "Big Macs" stand quietly on the bank of the Xiangjiang River. They are 33.6 meters high, equivalent to 11 stories. They are my country's first batch of nationally produced 9,000-ton grain air film silos and the fourth generation of new grain silos in China.
How important is warehousing? According to data released by the State Council Information Office of the State Administration of Grain and Material Reserves in 2025, the average annual loss of grain in storage, transportation, and processing in our country accounts for about 2% of that year's output. Insect infestation, mildew, and respiratory depletion are the three major invisible losses in grain storage.
Jin Yuyang, custodian of the Warehousing Section of the Changsha Direct Depot of Sinograin: "In the traditional grain storage process, one of the biggest difficulties is the air tightness of the granary. When it is difficult to ensure the air tightness, we need to increase the frequency of insecticides or increase the amount of pesticides used. This has been a pain point for us for a long time."
There is also a "carbon account" hidden behind this pain point. In the past, the air tightness was not enough, and the warehouse had to be repeatedly fumigated with chemical agents. Each round of fumigation was an additional increase in carbon emissions and the accumulation of risks from agent residues.
The air film chamber provides a smarter solution. Its outermost membrane material is formed in one piece, and its air tightness reaches more than 6 times that of the national high-standard granary. Its thermal insulation performance is about three times that of traditional granaries. Once filled with nitrogen in the warehouse, it can maintain a basically oxygen-free environment for a long time, and the nitrogen concentration is stable at about 98%. When there is less oxygen, pests suffocate and molds stop growing. Using physical methods instead of chemical pesticides not only protects the food, but also protects the green. This is the specific embodiment of the green and low-carbon transformation in the warehousing process.
Since the "14th Five-Year Plan", my country has implemented in-depth actions to improve green grain warehousing: the national standard warehouse intact storage capacity exceeds 730 million tons; the capacity of low-temperature and quasi-low-temperature storage grain storage warehouses exceeds 250 million tons; and the capacity of controlled atmosphere storage grain storage warehouses exceeds 67 million tons. In the demonstration area for the integrated application of green grain storage technology, the use of chemicals has been reduced by 50% and energy consumption has been reduced by 20%.
After the storage period has passed safely in the "good house", it's time for the food to set off again, and the last step is the dining table. At 12 noon, the smart cafeteria of China Agricultural University ushered in the busiest moment of the day.
Here, the screen clearly shows how many grams, how much, and how many calories a spoonful of vegetables contains. After implementing on-demand food pickup, the smart restaurant’s food waste was reduced by one-third. The dining table is the end of the food industry chain and the total outlet of carbon emissions in the entire food industry chain. Behind every bowl of rice, there is an invisible "carbon footprint chain". This bowl of rice is wasted, and the corresponding inputs in cultivated land, water, fertilizers, energy and other resources along the entire chain have become pure waste, resulting in unnecessary carbon emissions. Food dumped into trash cans will also release greenhouse gases such as methane after rotting in landfills.
Reducing waste is changing from personal awareness to national action. In April 2021, the "Anti-Food Waste Law of the People's Republic of China" was officially implemented. This is my country's first law specifically to control food waste. From "Operation CD-ROM" to "Meals by the Gram", reducing waste has become a quantifiable action for the whole society.
Every grain saved on the table is the greenest “increased production”: it does not occupy an acre of land, does not consume a square meter of water, does not apply a pound of fertilizer, and does not increase a single gram of carbon emissions. With the same output, more grain will actually be turned into rice, which will increase effective supply, save resources, and reduce carbon emissions.
The journey of a grain of grain connects the green chain from the land to the table: if the soil is well maintained, it is a long-term account; if it is recycled in the field, it is an ecological account; if there is less loss in storage, it is an account of intangible "increased production"; if there is no waste on the table, it is an account that everyone can write. Only by coordinating the four accounts can we promote the steady development of the entire green and low-carbon agriculture chain.
