China avoids grain drain, reporting record yields despite floods, droughts and import doubts
- Extreme weather events and geopolitics complicate the picture for China’s agricultural landscape, but the country’s grain output hit an all-time high
- Adoption of advanced techniques, as well as hefty subsidies to encourage production, have led to record yields
The estimate was made as 96.2 per cent of this autumn’s grains have been harvested, according to survey results released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs last week.
It also means an increase in output for the fourth consecutive year, an especially remarkable feat as floods and droughts struck provinces considered national breadbaskets, the ministry was quoted by state broadcaster CCTV as saying.
Beijing is ramping up its domestic food production to safeguard against vulnerabilities in global food supply chains as geopolitical threats intensify and extreme weather events grow more frequent.
Grain production rose 0.5 per cent year on year to 686.5 million metric tons in 2022, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
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Its planting acreage of autumn crops is expected to reach 87.33 million hectares (215.7 million acres), an increase of 0.47 million hectares from a year earlier.
This year’s spike largely came about through Beijing’s efforts to boost planting acreage and improve per-unit productivity through technology.
Since the beginning of the year, Beijing has taken its experience in ploughing and fertilising experimental farmland and adapted it to the country’s entire agricultural sector, increasing food yields and mitigating climatic uncertainties.
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This is one-third of the US’ total annual acreage for the crop, according to United States Department of Agriculture estimates from June.
Last year, over 60 per cent of the food China imported was soybeans – mainly from the US and Brazil, according to customs data – as poor returns relative to other choices dampened domestic farmers’ willingness to plant.
This year’s increase in production follows stronger subsidies for cultivation issued before the spring sowing, said Pan Wenbo, head of the ministry’s crop production department in late October.
The ministry has projected maize acreage to increase by about 860,000 hectares (212 million acres). In 2021, Beijing introduced several subsidies and initiatives to end what had been six consecutive years of acreage decline.
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Last year, China adopted a method to symbiotically cultivate soybeans and maize – laying out rows so maize leaves provide shade for soybeans and harnessing the bacteria produced by soybean roots to enhance the maize’s fertility – optimising land utilisation for these crucial crops that remain proportionally heavily imported.
The country’s total acreage of soybean-maize hybrid fields reached 1.3 million hectares this year, about 34 per cent more than last year.
Countrywide expansion of similar methods is well under way. The government has designated 200 counties for the use of advanced planting techniques for maize and 100 for soybeans this year, and their yields have contributed 73 per cent to China’s overall grain harvest, the ministry said.
A new round of autumn and winter planting is in progress. As of Friday, the ministry said, more than 90 per cent of planned acreage had been planted for both winter wheat and oilseed.
