The food issue is both a "matter of the nation" and a "concern of the people." Fujian has long been known as "eight parts mountain, one part water, one part farmland," and its per capita arable land area is only one quarter of the national average. In the 1980s, Fujian needed to bring in large quantities of grain and vegetables from other provinces every year. During his work in Fujian, General Secretary Xi Jinping was the first to propose and explore the practice of the "big food concept": stabilize grain production, work mountains, seas, and fields together, and develop agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, sideline production, and fisheries in an all-round way. Over the past 30-plus years, Fujian has relied on its diverse agricultural resources and favorable climate to promote the transformation of characteristic modern agriculture in light of local conditions. "Marine pastures," "forest granaries," and protected agriculture have developed in an all-round way, and the capacity for diversified food supply has been effectively enhanced.

Lianjiang County in Fuzhou City is the famous "Hometown of Chinese Kelp." It is now the peak kelp harvest season, and both land and sea are bustling with activity.

At the dock of Guanwu Village in Xiaocheng Town, tons of kelp are hoisted onto heavy trucks and transported to processing plants. After multiple processes such as blanching and cooling, this kelp will be made into various foods and sold domestically and overseas.

Fujian's sea area covers 136,000 square kilometers. This vast sea area contains abundant marine products, but in the 1980s, marine resources were not effectively developed. In 1993, Xi Jinping, then Secretary of the Fuzhou Municipal Party Committee, proposed that sea areas should be valued as much as arable land, and marine development should be pursued as vigorously as grain production. Guided by the relevant spirit, Fuzhou accelerated the extension of its search for food from land to the sea.

At that time, although Lianjiang's kelp had already achieved local breeding and local cultivation, there was still much room for improvement in quality and scale. In order to better seek food from the sea, Lianjiang County strengthened cooperation with scientific research institutions and, through scientific and technological empowerment, developed high-quality kelp varieties such as "Huangguan No. 1."

In the past, seedlings were purchased from the north, and the yield per mu was less than 5,000 kilograms. Now Lianjiang County is the country's largest kelp seedling cultivation base, with a yield of 30,000 kilograms per mu. It not only achieves self-sufficiency but also provides seedlings to northern regions such as Dalian, the birthplace of artificial kelp breeding in China. Now, kelp aquaculture here is developing toward an ecological aquaculture model that moves from inner bays to open seas, from monoculture to rotational mixed culture, and from low yield to high yield and high efficiency. In addition, relying on the advantages of high-quality kelp varieties, the local area has developed a variety of kelp series products, continuously enriching people's choices of kelp foods.

Kelp aquaculture in Lianjiang County is a microcosm of Fujian's efforts over the past 30-plus years to strengthen the development of marine resources and seek food from the sea. Firmly establishing the big food concept and vigorously developing Fujian's marine granary, Fujian has achieved solid results in promoting the high-quality development of the marine economy.

In 2023, Fujian's total marine production value was about 1.2 trillion yuan, and the total output of aquatic products was 8.9 million tons. Among them, the output of marine products was 7.88 million tons, accounting for one quarter of the national output and ranking first in the country; the per capita possession of aquatic products exceeded 200 kilograms, ranking first in the country; and the aquaculture output of large yellow croaker, abalone, oyster, gracilaria, kelp, pufferfish, and others all ranked first in the country.

Right now is the planting season for some crops. At the forest farm base of the Sanku Ecological Agriculture Cooperative in Houyang Village, Zhouning County, Ningde City, villagers are busy turning soil, digging pits, and planting seedlings under the forest.

Ningde is located in northeastern Fujian. Surrounded by mountains and sea, it has more mountains and less land, with more than 90 percent of its land area consisting of mountains and hills. Food is a major issue.

In the early 1980s, Huang Zhenfang, a villager from Houyang Village in Zhouning County, established a family forest farm. Over three years, he led his family in planting more than 1,000 mu of trees on barren hills. To overcome the long harvest cycle of afforestation, he also intercropped crops such as potatoes and konjac under the trees. Upon hearing of this, Comrade Xi Jinping visited the site three times for research and wrote in "How Can a Weak Bird Fly First: Reflections on a Survey of Nine Counties in Eastern Fujian" that Huang Zhenfang's family forest farm in Zhouning County was doing well and provided a line of thinking for developing forestry.

In the traditional concept of agricultural planting, having more mountains and less land is an absolute disadvantage; at that time, local agriculture was still mainly focused on cultivated land management, and forestry resources had not been effectively developed. Based on in-depth research, Comrade Xi Jinping proposed that "one should rely on the mountains to make a living from the mountains and sing mountain songs, and rely on the sea to make a living from the sea and chant sea scriptures," and that forests are reservoirs, money banks, and grain banks.

The General Secretary's instructions opened up new thinking for Houyang Village. Within a few years, barren hills became forests. When the trees were planted, the saplings were only 40 to 50 centimeters tall. The sunlight exposure under the trees and the soil and other conditions were suitable for the growth of food crops such as potatoes and sweet potatoes, so these crops were planted on a large scale under the forest.

Today, the trees planted back then have closed into a forest, and light-demanding crops are no longer suitable for continued planting under the forest. People's lives are getting better and better, and they have higher requirements for the richness and nutritional value of food. Houyang Village has begun new explorations in light of local conditions and ultimately determined a new approach of planting crops such as Anoectochilus roxburghii, Dendrobium officinale, Polygonatum, and Sarcandra glabra under the forest.

Adapting to local conditions broadened Houyang Village's horizons and brought new development to the village. Under the General Secretary's relevant instructions, in recent years Houyang Village has adjusted its approach in light of local conditions and "made a living from the mountains" in a "new way." Zhouning County, where Houyang Village is located, has also targeted the under-forest economy and developed various models such as "forest medicine," "forest fungi," "forest flowers," "forest grain," and "forest oil," promoting the combination of "intercropping and free-range raising" and continuously exploring ways to seek food from forests with higher efficiency.

Over the past 30-plus years, Fujian has scientifically utilized forest land resources, deeply tapped forest potential, and vigorously developed the under-forest economy. In 2023, the area used for Fujian's under-forest economy was 32.29 million mu, with an output value of 83 billion yuan. The annual output of camellia oil was 26,000 tons, and bamboo shoots 1.399 million tons. The province's economic forest area was 33.858 million mu, with a product output of 9.957 million tons, of which the area of chinquapin and chestnut reached 820,000 mu, with an annual output of 93,000 tons.

Practicing the big food concept requires not only basing efforts on resource endowments and characteristic agricultural advantages—growing grain where grain is suitable, fishing where fishing is suitable, and forestry where forestry is suitable—but also developing protected agriculture and seeking food from protected agriculture, a modern agricultural method that uses engineering and technical means for efficient production.

In 1989, Comrade Xi Jinping proposed in "Correctly Handling the Six Relationships in the Economic Development of Eastern Fujian": we must break out of the traditional natural-economy agricultural circle and step up to a new level of comprehensive commodity-economy large agriculture. For a long time, Fujian has explored in practice and innovated through exploration, integrating the big food concept into the construction of characteristic modern agriculture.

Anoectochilus roxburghii is a traditional Chinese medicinal herb and also a local specialty food in Fujian. In recent years, Nanjing County in Zhangzhou, Fujian, has adopted a forest-based wild-simulation model to grow Anoectochilus roxburghii, with good harvests.

Under the concept of the "big food concept," Nanjing County is expanding from single medicinal material production to the diversified field of health foods. In order to ensure better quality of Anoectochilus roxburghii, protected agriculture naturally cannot be absent from the planting process.

Modern protected agriculture can break through resource and environmental constraints, continuously improve output efficiency per unit, and ensure the stable and safe supply of important agricultural products. A seedling cultivation park for Anoectochilus roxburghii covers less than 5,000 square meters, but with the support of protected agriculture such as three-dimensional cultivation, it can cultivate more than 10 million bottles of Anoectochilus roxburghii each year. Compared with traditional planting models, the three-dimensional cultivation model not only saves 70 percent of land but also increases annual output by more than 14,700 kilograms.

Zhuang Dingsheng, head of the Economic Crop Station of Nanjing County, Zhangzhou City, Fujian: "By using suspended planting troughs and building multi-layer planting racks, we maximize output per unit area and further save land resources; in addition, we use shade-net greenhouses and precision watering systems to regulate temperature and humidity. This method can save 654 tons of water per mu per year. Through scientific planting, the survival rate of Anoectochilus roxburghii has been raised to 95 percent. Through modern agricultural facilities, we can use fewer resources to produce more varieties and greater quantities of food."

In recent years, the application of protected agriculture equipment and technology in Fujian has continued to accelerate. At present, the province has developed more than 2.4 million mu of protected agriculture area, providing strong support for enriching the supply of important agricultural products.

Concepts guide change, and persistence will surely bring results. During his work in Fujian, Comrade Xi Jinping creatively proposed and actively explored and practiced the big food concept. From the Central Rural Work Conference in 2015, which first proposed "establishing the concept of big agriculture and big food," to the Central Rural Work Conference in 2022, which emphasized that "to solve the problem of eating, we cannot only stare at limited arable land; we must open our thinking and establish the big food concept," General Secretary Xi Jinping's series of important expositions on the big food concept have enriched new connotations for safeguarding national food security and charted new ideas for promoting high-quality agricultural development.

Deng Xiaogang, member of the Party Leadership Group and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs: "Ensuring the stable and safe supply of grain and important agricultural products is the primary task of agricultural and rural departments. Practicing the big food concept is a major deployment made by the General Secretary and the Party Central Committee in response to changes in the people's consumption structure, and it is an objective need for breaking resource and environmental bottlenecks and firmly holding the Chinese people's rice bowl."

Wang Jianjun, Director of the Department of Economic and Trade of the National Development and Reform Commission: "The National Development and Reform Commission will earnestly study and implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important expositions on the big food concept, strengthen policy research and planning guidance, policy coordination and overall planning, and remove bottlenecks and blockages. We will summarize and promote the experiences and practices of various localities in practicing the big food concept and push the work of implementing the big food concept to a new level and new results."

Feeding more than 1.4 billion people well is not an easy task. "To solve the problem of eating, we cannot only stare at limited arable land; we must open our thinking and establish the big food concept. Eating is not just about consuming grain; meat, eggs, milk, fruits, vegetables, fish, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and so on are all delicious foods." The big food concept gives new connotations to food security. The big food concept is also an organic unity of the big resource concept, big agriculture concept, big market concept, and big security concept. It is a change in concepts, an expansion of space, and a tapping of resources, and it is also a vivid practice of transforming and upgrading modern agricultural industries and building an agricultural powerhouse.