Corn harvest season starts in Shandong's county

[Video provided for chinadaily.com.cn]

It's September and in Chengwu county in Heze city – located in East China's Shandong province – residents are all revved up to bring in the autumn harvest.

The county is known as an important garlic production zone in China, with around 30 mu (2 hectares) of land always used to grow garlic crops. Farmers here have adopted an innovative rotating planting method, where they alternate between garlic and corn twice a year, which is said to help ensure a good, earlier corn harvest.

This year, Chengwu county has around 600,000 mu of cornfields under cultivation. Of these, 150,000 mu of corn was planted after the garlic crop. Thanks to favorable weather and well-built farming infrastructure, the corn is growing exceptionally well compared with previous years.

According to Zhou Maoxi, director of the Chengwu County Agricultural Machinery Service Center, the autumn harvest in the county starts about two weeks earlier than in other places. To ensure smooth operations during this busy time, the county's agricultural machinery department has set up 12 professional service teams to provide machinery maintenance and new technologies to cooperatives and farmers.

What's more, to better assist farmers with timely harvesting, the county has also provided over 10,000 sets of various machinery, including more than 2,000 corn combine harvesters and over 1,500 rotary tillers.

This comprehensive approach is expected to guarantee a successful, high-quality and efficient autumn corn harvest season in Chengwu county. (Edited by Zhou Yunlai)