Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, one of China's main corn-producing areas, is currently in the middle of its corn harvest season. Farmers are making the most of favorable weather conditions to bring in the autumn harvest and secure both higher yields and higher incomes.

In recent days, at a corn planting base in Bayi Village, Bayi Township, Linhe District of Bayannur City in western Inner Mongolia, the roar of combine harvesters has been rising and falling in waves. Operators drove small harvesters to cut corn stalks, tipped the sorted corn cobs into tractor trailers, and farmers promptly transported the cobs back home. Ding Yanjun, a villager from Bayi Village, said: "My family planted 80 mu of corn. In the past, harvesting by hand took about ten days, but now with a combine harvester it can be done in just one day."

In farmland in Bainnaobao Township and Wulantuke Township of Linhe District, multiple medium and small combine harvesters were seen shuttling back and forth, completing operations such as cutting corn stalks and sorting corn cobs in sequence. Lu Bo, head of the Linhe District Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Science and Technology Bureau, told reporters: "This year Linhe District has more than 800,000 mu of corn planted, of which over 70% has completed high-standard farmland construction. We are gradually adopting technologies such as Beidou satellite navigation, high-density precision integrated water and fertilizer management, and film-free shallow-buried drip irrigation to achieve standardized planting, intelligent management, and mechanized harvesting, further raising corn yields and quality while reducing mechanical loss rates."

Bayannur City, which encompasses the Hetao Irrigation District, has more than 12 million mu of sown area for various crops and is a major producer of high-quality corn in China. Sun Lixin, director of the Bayannur Municipal Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Bureau, said: "This year the city planted more than 5.3 million mu of grain corn. From planting to harvesting, mechanized operations have been basically achieved. Planting quality is easy to manage, and harvesting saves both time and labor, achieving the pairing of good seeds with good methods and the integration of agricultural machinery and agronomy, maximizing the potential for grain yield increases."

Right now, about 20 million mu of corn in Tongliao City is plump with grain filling, and some early-maturing varieties are gradually reaching harvest. In Aolibugao Township, Horqin District of Tongliao City, Cui Hong, head of Deyno Agricultural Services Co., Ltd., is organizing large combine harvesters to go into the fields for harvesting. Cui Hong said the company this year transferred 8,700 mu of land on a whole-village basis and also provided unified planting and harvesting social services for two villages. "We expect to finish harvesting within two weeks," Cui Hong said. "With high accumulated temperatures this year, the corn has matured better than the same period last year, and one mu is expected to produce more than 2,400 jin of grain."

"For large-scale standardized corn planting, direct grain harvesting is the key to saving grain and reducing losses," Cui Hong said. In the past, limited by fragmented plots and tight individual finances, direct grain harvesting was difficult to promote on a large scale, and "ground-piled grain" caused considerable losses. Now, large-scale land management has turned small fields into large fields, and large areas of high-standard farmland have created the conditions for promoting the high-yield technical model of dense planting with precise regulation. Cooperatives and grain farmers have also gradually accepted the direct grain harvesting model.

On the fields of Horqin District, operators drive large combine harvesters back and forth, and golden corn kernels are quickly loaded into trucks and transported to grain stations for drying and storage. In Jarud Banner of Tongliao City, an operator drives a harvester to gather corn (drone photo). Photo by Xinhua reporter Lian Zhen.

Tongliao City is an important corn-producing area in Inner Mongolia. This year its grain sown area reached 22.284 million mu, with about 20 million mu of corn, of which nearly 15 million mu uses the high-yield technical model of dense planting with precise regulation. Inner Mongolia is an important national grain production base, and its corn planting area and output both rank among the top in the country. This year, Inner Mongolia has coordinated the deployment of agricultural machinery across the region, and about 15,000 corn harvesters have now been put into use. Autumn harvest progress is being arranged reasonably according to weather changes and crop maturity, ensuring that "as soon as one patch is ripe, it is harvested in time."