An old saying in China goes that food is the first necessity of man, which shows how highly the Chinese people value food. As a basic necessity in life, food has remained an issue of top concern for the Chinese government and common people.

China is traditionally an agricultural country, with most of its residents living in rural areas. Agriculture has always been considered the lifeline of the national economy. But for a country that has 1.3 billion people, one fifth of the world's total population, addressing the challenge of maintaining an adequate food supply has been an arduous task.

60 years ago, most of the people in China struggled on the verge of starvation and poverty, due to the low agricultural productivity, frequent natural disasters and the continued turmoil of war. Simply having enough food to eat was a dream for most ordinary people.

After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the Chinese government adopted a series of measures to support the development of agriculture and food production. The country's grain output doubled within three decades. But at the same time, the number of Chinese population also increased rapidly. Food shortage therefore continued to be a severe problem confronting the country and its people.

Before 1978, farmlands in China were collectively owned and operated. Farmers worked together and shared the produce equally. This mode of operation boosted the agriculture industry initially, but in the long run it hindered farmers' enthusiasm to work and led to reduced efficiency and low production.

At the end of 1978, a group of farmers from Xiaogang village in Anhui province decided to break away from the old agricultural production pattern and contract the collective farmland to individual households. Each household would deliver a full quota of grain to the state, and then could keep any leftovers. This operation mode was later known as the "household contract responsibility system".

Yan Hongchang, then the head of agricultural production in Xiaogang village, recalls that the new practice encouraged local farmers to cultivate their own land and maximize their output.

"We were so poor at that time, we thought we must do something to change the situation. The result proved that our effort was worthwhile. The following year, we were surprised to find the grain output had increased fourfold and was far more than enough to meet our needs."

In the following years, the household contract responsibility system was extended to other rural areas and led to an agricultural boom around the country. Under the system, state-owned farmland was leased to families in return for delivery of fixed output quotas. Households became the main economic unit of agricultural production in rural China, with personal income linked to output. The system enabled many poor villages to escape the grip of poverty within a few years. Yang Jiliang is a farmer in Anhui province.