National Three-Summer cross-regional wheat combine harvesting campaign basically concluded after 24 days
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, June 25 (Reporter Dong Jun) - Since the national “Three-Summer” wheat combine harvesting campaign was launched on June 1 in Zhumadian City, Henan Province, it has advanced gradually from south to north, and the combine harvesting work in major wheat-producing areas such as Anhui, Jiangsu, Henan, Shandong and Hebei has successively been completed. The national cross-regional wheat combine harvesting campaign has basically concluded, lasting 24 days.
As of the evening of the 24th, 314 million mu of wheat had been harvested nationwide, exceeding 92% of the wheat area due to be harvested; of this, the combine-harvested area was 270 million mu, with combine harvesting accounting for 86.01%. More than 30 million mu of spring wheat in the Northwest and Northeast regions will begin to be harvested successively from early July.
A relevant official of the Ministry of Agriculture said on the 25th that, affected by abnormal climate conditions, wheat in various places matured generally 7 to 10 days later than the previous year, and the major wheat-producing areas matured in a concentrated period, making the farming season urgent and the tasks of summer harvesting and summer planting extremely heavy. The Ministry of Agriculture arranged and deployed work early, all departments cooperated closely, and agricultural machinery departments in various places strengthened the dispatch of machinery, giving prominence to the word “rush” and going all out to accelerate the pace of operations, achieving the goal of seizing the time and racing against the weather, rushing the harvest and rushing the planting, and making important contributions to getting the summer grain safely into storage and to autumn grain production.
This year's cross-regional wheat combine harvesting campaign was carried out in 1,190 wheat-producing counties (cities) in 18 provinces nationwide, and the scale of operations further expanded compared with last year. During the “Three-Summer” period, the major producing provinces invested a total of 14 million units (sets) of agricultural machinery in rush-harvesting and rush-planting operations, including 470,000 wheat combine harvesters, an increase of 30,000 over last year; the number of combine harvesters participating in cross-regional operations reached 300,000, an increase of 20,000.
In response to the frequent thunderstorms in the wheat areas in mid-June, agricultural mechanization authorities in various places scientifically dispatched machinery, seized sunny days and battled rainy weather, and worked at full capacity day and night in rush-harvesting and rush-planting operations. The daily number of combine harvesters put into use reached a maximum of 414,000, and the daily combine-harvested wheat area reached a maximum of 27.76 million mu, exceeding 20 million mu for 5 consecutive days and exceeding 10 million mu for 11 consecutive days, both setting new records in the history of wheat harvesting in China. Although large-scale wheat harvesting started late this year, it progressed quickly in the later period and concluded after 24 days, 4 days fewer than last year, winning precious farming time for sowing the next crop and laying a good foundation for autumn grain production.
After the summer harvest, summer planting was carried out immediately. At present, a total of 3.7 million units (sets) of various sowing (transplanting) machines have been invested nationwide, completing 120 million mu of machine-sown corn and 9.86 million mu of machine-transplanted rice.