Guess which county in all of China exports the most agricultural products. Would it be located in Shandong, Hunan, or Guizhou province? The answer is Anqiu, Weifang, Shandong. As the nation's top county for agricultural exports, Anqiu has led Shandong province in vegetable export volume for 17 consecutive years. Its exports of ginger, scallions, and onions account for over 80% of the national total. So, how does Anqiu achieve this?

In fact, this achievement is built on a relentless local pursuit of agricultural product quality and safety, coupled with strict regulation of agricultural inputs. At the Changshengyuan Ecological Family Farm in Anqiu, manager Wang Baojie can remotely control the greenhouse's integrated water and fertilizer system via his phone. "In the past, ginger farming relied entirely on experience. Over-fertilizing led to soil compaction and frequent ginger wilt. Now, using virus-free ginger seeds and systematic plant protection, fertilizer use has been cut by more than half, soil organic matter has increased, and per-mu yield has doubled. Our ginger has successfully entered the EU market," Wang said, reflecting on the changes in cultivation practices.

As early as 2007, Anqiu established China's first deputy-county-level agricultural product quality and safety supervision center, with 14 township-level management service stations under it. This top-down design integrated supervision, testing, law enforcement, and traceability into one cohesive system. Meanwhile, a dedicated team of 108 full-time agricultural safety officers is active in the fields year-round, responsible for surveying, sampling, and testing the city's agricultural products, with over 100,000 batches tested annually. This combination of professional manpower and technical support enables Anqiu to achieve dynamic monitoring of every piece of farmland and precise quality control over every batch of produce.

Ginger, a flagship export product from Anqiu, has always had pesticide residues as a critical indicator affecting its export potential. To tackle the soil-borne disease problems caused by continuous cropping in ginger cultivation, the local area did not simply rely on chemical pesticides. Instead, it launched a "revolution" at the soil level. The local supply and marketing cooperative, in collaboration with research institutes, took the lead nationwide in promoting technical standards for soil fumigation and restoration services. This has reduced the use of chemical pesticides during the growing season by 30% to 50%. Additionally, Anqiu conducts thorough inspections of agricultural supply stores, cracking down hard on the illegal sale and use of banned soil fumigants such as methyl bromide.

The concept of ecological planting is also being implemented to the fullest. Heli Ecological Farm uses biogas slurry instead of traditional chemical fertilizers and leverages an intelligent integrated water-fertilizer system for precise control, establishing a virtuous cycle of "disease prevention through planting and soil nourishment through fertilization." In Anqiu, there are now over 1,900 such family farms. The city's 400,000 mu of ecological bases have moved away from over-reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, significantly boosting soil organic matter content. The pass rate for pesticide residue tests on its agricultural products remains consistently above 99% year-round.

Superior quality strengthens the credibility of Anqiu's "international passport" for its produce. Anqiu has assigned a unique "digital ID" quality and safety code to all 130,000 production and business entities, which, together with an ecological origin code, forms a "dual-code" system. Consumers can scan the code to see the entire process from planting to testing, greatly enhancing trust in international markets. In response to frequently changing pesticide residue standards worldwide, Anqiu has also built the nation's first international agricultural standards database, dynamically tracking regulatory changes in 67 countries and regions and providing early warnings to exporters six months in advance. Today, Anqiu's agricultural products are shipped worldwide at a rate of 180 standard containers per day, using the strictest pesticide control measures to safeguard food safety.