Another Outstanding Year for Grain Production, With Science and Technology Playing a Remarkable Role

This year, grain production withstood multiple tests, including severe natural disasters in certain areas, frequent biological disasters, and a volatile market environment, achieving a strong defense of high output levels and a climb from a high base, with science and technology playing a key role. At the same time, with an eye to tapping the potential for increasing grain output, this year the Ministry of Agriculture organized and carried out the Year of High-Yield Grain Creation and Yield-Increase Model Research and Upgrading Activities, integrating and promoting regional, standardized high-yield and high-efficiency technical models, building high-yield creation demonstration zones and yield-increase and efficiency-enhancement pilot zones, with both wheels turning together to help achieve bumper harvests in summer grain, early rice, and autumn grain season after season.

Expanding from points to patches, with typical examples leading the way to high yields. Whether key technologies can enter villages, households, and fields - no matter how much you say, it is better to show the farmers. Using high-yield creation as a platform, all localities integrated and promoted high-yield, high-quality varieties and supporting cultivation techniques, taking the lead in displaying and promoting them in 10,000-mu demonstration patches, turning the experimental field yields of experts into the field yields of farmers, and a number of 10,000-mu-scale, contiguous high-yield examples emerged. According to expert yield measurements, the 10,436 10,000-mu grain demonstration patches nationwide averaged 610.4 kg per mu, 70% higher than the national average yield per mu. These high-yield examples turned advanced and mature technologies into solid output, and were affectionately called by farmers schools without walls and classrooms without blackboards.

Extending from patches to areas, advancing on a whole-system basis to promote balance. On the basis of 10,000-mu high-yield creation, all localities deepened the connotation of creation, expanded the scale of creation, and promoted balanced yield increases. This year, pilot projects for whole-system advancement of grain and oil crops continued to be carried out in 500 townships (towns), 50 counties (cities), and 5 cities (prefectures), building a number of large fields of several tens of thousands of mu, over 100,000 mu, and several hundred thousand mu, and creating a number of 1.5-ton-grain townships, ton-grain counties, and ton-grain cities. Dezhou City, Shandong Province, advanced high-yield creation on a whole-city basis, implementing the “three-level joint creation” of city, county, and township, radiating and driving the city's cumulative wheat and corn two-season yield per mu to reach 1,138 kg, exceeding one ton of grain for 6 consecutive years.

⟦NL> Testing while improving, model research raising the level. While doing a good job in high-yield creation, the Ministry of Agriculture organized and carried out research on grain yield-increase models, comprehensively considering crop layouts, rotation arrangements, light, temperature, water, and other resource conditions in different regions, selecting 62 counties with good basic conditions and great potential for increasing yields, focusing on promoting 58 regional, standardized high-yield and high-efficiency technical models, and building a number of yield-increase and efficiency-enhancement pilot zones. Through experiments and pilots, a number of scientific, practical, replicable, and promotable high-yield and high-efficiency technical models were explored and formed.

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