Seventy-three-year-old farmer Zhou Jingzhen thought he knew all he needed to know about growing dates -- but now he is learning all over again.

Rather than simply just watering his palms, he is now also digging radial ditches channel organic fertilizer to the roots and spraying pesticide mixed according to expert instruction.

"Only in this way, can we ensure the dates sold overseas are the quality expected by foreigners," says Zhou, of Shandong Province's Zhanhua county, which is famous for its dates.

China's agricultural products have often failed to meet different import standards abroad, so the government is inspiring farmers to earn more by improving the quality of produce in the latest five-year program starting this year.

East China's Shandong Province spearheaded the quality drive by launching a pilot project two years ago.

The Good Agriculture Practice (GAP) project aims to trace plant growth through seed stock, fertilizer, planting and packaging in a bid to ensure products pass export tests.

With the successful operation in Shandong, China's food safety watchdog, the State Food and Drug Administration, is promoting the practice of GAP to 14 provinces and municipalities this year.

Shandong has applied GAP to 12 key agricultural export products, including dates, ginger and garlic.

Zhanhua County, for example, is unsuitable for high-yield crops due to its saline-alkali soil, but is a desirable place for date palms, which provide employment for approximately 60 percent of the locals.

Before GAP was implemented, the dates could only be sold on the domestic market and failed foreign export tests because of low quality and pesticide residue, according to a local government official.

"At that time, farmers wanted to boost production and resorted to using too much pesticide and fertilizer. This made our dates unsuitable for export and our incomes suffered," says Zhou, whose family cultivates about 1,000 palms.

"In the past two years, we have been taught the proper use of fertilizers and pesticides. With the new methods, quality has risen and some are exported."

GAP is expected to help China overcome difficulties in produce exports, says Yang Luyong, deputy director of overseas cooperation in the Shandong Provincial Agricultural Department.

About 90 percent of the agricultural industry was affected by foreign trade barriers with the main problem being pesticide residue, causing about US$9 billion in losses to China's foreign trade enterprises every year, according to information from the Ministry of Commerce.

(Xinhua News Agency April 10, 2006)