At present, the northwest Shandong plain has entered the intense period of autumn production. With many consecutive days of fine, crisp autumn weather, Li Kai, who has contracted 475 mu of land, is not in a hurry to rush the harvest. This year he only dispatched two corn combine harvesters and is advancing the harvest at a steady pace.
In addition to combine harvesters, on this farmland in Pangzhuang Village, Zhenxing Street, Chiping District, Liaocheng City, this post-90s farmer and other machinery operators are running large equipment such as straw shredders and rotary tillers in sequence. After the harvesting operation is completed, the remaining large machines can enter the fields one after another, allowing reaping, plowing, sowing and field management to be completed in one continuous flow, Li Kai said.
Li Kai's confidence comes from the integrated water and fertilizer equipment laid in the fields. In 2025, he installed this system on all the land he contracted, solving the most exhausting management problem in past farming. As long as drought is detected in the field, the equipment can be turned on at any time for irrigation, and most importantly, it reduces labor input, Li Kai said. In fields managed with integrated water and fertilizer equipment, the crop growth is uniform across the whole field, with no weak seedlings.
In the past, when we farmed, we needed to build ridges between plots, one ridge every 6 meters, to make later irrigation easier. But those ridges take up cultivated land. On 100 mu of land, ridges occupied 8 mu, Li Kai said. After using the integrated water and fertilizer equipment, all the ridges in the fields were converted into cultivated land, increasing the planted area. Beyond field management, Li Kai has also worked on the planting process. He studied precision sowing to reduce seed use. Seed use per mu dropped from 50 jin to about 27 jin. In addition, he tried wide-and-narrow row planting. In his view, working with the land no longer relies only on experience, but more on scientific knowledge.
Since he began contracting land in 2020, Li Kai has consistently grown a waxy corn variety with high starch content, all under an order-based model, sold directly to an enterprise in Dezhou after harvest. This corn is 0.15 yuan per jin higher than ordinary corn, which means an extra 200 yuan of income per mu.
In the future, farming will no longer be physical labor, but mental labor. This year I expanded the contracted area again, to a total of 723.8 mu. Agricultural experts often come to guide us, which gives me confidence, Li Kai said. With scientific guidance at every stage, even under earlier drought conditions, this autumn's corn harvest did not decline.
Shandong, as a major agricultural province, has a strong agricultural machinery and equipment industry that ranks among the top nationwide, with the comprehensive mechanization rate for major crop cultivation and harvest exceeding 92%. During this year's autumn production period, Shandong is expected to deploy 1.53 million units of various agricultural machinery, including 135,000 corn combine harvesters and 206,000 wheat seeders. From summer production to autumn production, large farm machinery is becoming the main force in Shandong's grain production.
Right now, Juye County in Heze City has welcomed its autumn harvest season. The locality is vigorously promoting an integrated operation model for simultaneous corn ear and stalk harvesting and yellow silage storage. Through new ear-and-stalk combine harvesters, corn ears and stalks are harvested and processed at the same time, ensuring that autumn grain is returned to storage while turning post-harvest corn stalks into high-quality yellow silage feed.
At a corn planting base in Taomiao Town, Juye County, large ear-and-stalk combine harvesters shuttle through the fields. Compared with the traditional model, large ear-and-stalk combine harvesters eliminate the stalk-processing step and also reduce pollution, said Shen Xinkun, a large grain grower at the Xiangyang Family Farm in Taomiao Town. This year he planted 1,036 mu of land. In addition to income from corn, stalk income can reach more than 100,000 yuan.
At the foot of Mount Tai, new farmers are also managing land in entirely new ways. In the golden autumn season, at the Sanquanshan wild jujube planting base in Shagou Village, Huamawan Township, Tai'an City, rows of jujube trees flourish across the rolling slopes, with clusters of full red fruit hanging from the dense green branches. The ground is fully covered with weed-control fabric, and fallen fruit scatters across the cloth, which both reduces weed growth and makes it easier to collect dropped jujubes. This 300-mu jujube orchard was once unattended sloping wasteland just a few years ago, but today it has become a shared prosperity orchard that boosts income for nearby villagers.
The person who awakened this land is Sun Qiang, a post-80s young man who returned home to start a business. The wild jujube is valuable from top to bottom, Sun Qiang said. Fully ripe red fresh fruit is sweet and tart, with outstanding medicinal value and a calming effect that aids sleep. Fruit that falls to the ground and cannot be sold still has valuable pits and kernels. The pit waste left after removing the kernel can fill pillows. Young jujube shoots that sprout in spring can be stir-fried into jujube sprout tea. The flesh can also be processed into juice, pastries and fruit wine. Even the roots of the jujube tree have uses, achieving comprehensive utilization of the whole plant.
In the autumn season, Shandong's new farmers are redefining farming with technology and knowledge. The former toil of facing the yellow earth with backs to the sky is being replaced by large farm machinery, smart equipment and scientific management. On this land, where total grain output has remained stable above 110 billion jin for five consecutive years, more and more young people are taking over the steering wheel of the land, giving new answers to who will farm the land and how it will be farmed.