Kenneth Quinn, president emeritus of the World Food Prize Foundation, found it propitious that Oct 16, the opening day of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, is also a date commemorated worldwide as UN World Food Day.

In an article published on the foundation's website, Quinn recalled a trip that General Secretary Xi Jinping took to Iowa in 1985 when, as a young Party leader in Hebei province, he received "an exceptional introduction to modern American agriculture".

Quinn, a strategic adviser to the US Heartland China Association, also remembered Xi's second visit to Iowa, in 2012, as China's vice-president.

"Xi made a sentimental return visit to Iowa where he drove a tractor on an American farm and delivered the keynote address at the US-China High Level Agricultural Symposium at the magnificently restored Dr Norman Borlaug Hall of Laureates, the home of the World Food Prize Foundation," Quinn said.

Xi heard accounts of how his father had visited Iowa in 1980, shortly after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Washington, and of how Yuan Longping, China's greatest agricultural scientist, was presented the World Food Prize in Des Moines, Iowa, Quinn said. In addition, export contracts were signed for $3.5 billion worth of soybeans from the US heartland.

Quinn said he considers those moments as exceptional high points in US-China bilateral relations. He said the great lesson from these occasions was that "peace through agriculture may be the best hope for a stable and productive Sino-American relationship over the coming decades".

Peace can be promoted not only by increased trade in agricultural products and commodities between China and the US, he said, but also by them joining together to uplift the poorest countries, and sustainably producing and distributing sufficient nutritious food for the world population.

Quinn acknowledged that bilateral government-to-government relations have become fraught with problems in recent years.

However, he pointed out that the US Heartland China Association, led by former Missouri governor Bob Holden, has endeavored to promote positive ties through agricultural trade and increased exchanges among private business entities, NGOs and educational organizations.

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