Eleventh Consecutive Grain Increase May Involve Deception, Technological Yield Gains Increasingly Difficult

The National Bureau of Statistics issued a notice on December 4, stating that the national total grain output in 2014 reached 607.099 million tons, an increase of 5.16 million tons over 2013. China's total grain output achieved an “eleventh consecutive increase”.

Another grain increase should be good news. However, as soon as the news came out, it triggered numerous doubts. This year's drought was severe, so how could grain output still increase? Some scholars even pointed out that there are problems of falsification in China's grain production data.

Xu Zhun, a lecturer at the School of Economics at Renmin University of China, is one of the doubters. Not long ago, he and his collaborator had just published an article questioning China's grain “tenth consecutive increase”. His attitude toward the current “eleventh consecutive increase” is the same.

One piece of evidence Xu Zhun provides is China's continuously increasing grain imports. From 2000 to 2012, China's imports of cereals and soybeans rose from 16 million tons to 72 million tons. He stated that the climbing import volume reveals that China's grain production is struggling to keep up with demand growth, and that China's actual grain output is greatly lower than the level announced by the government.

So, under the “eleventh consecutive increase”, what exactly is the situation of China's grain growth? In the future, where will China's grain production go?

The debate over whether it increased or not

In Xu Zhun's view, a country's grain output should be roughly similar to its total usage. The data from 1981 to 2007 is an example. Xu Zhun estimated total grain output and total usage for those years, and the two differed by only 1.3%. However, since 2008, this figure has changed greatly.

In his calculations, from 2008 to 2012, official grain output was continuously higher than estimated total grain usage, and the gap between the two gradually expanded from 10.1% to 22.2%. In his view, the problem did not lie in total usage.

“‘Eleventh consecutive increase’ is a rare situation in history. Generally, grain production fluctuates, and the disappearance of fluctuation is abnormal.” This view of Xu Zhun's was echoed by Jiang Gaoming, a researcher at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Jiang Gaoming said that the characteristic of agriculture is “one abundant year, one poor year, and two average years” within four years. In recent years, cultivated land has been decreasing, farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain is not high, land abandonment is common, and combined with severe natural disasters, people cannot help but doubt the authenticity behind the data.

However, in the view of other experts, the inferences of Xu Zhun and others do not hold up.

Regarding the increase in imports, Yin Haiqing, a researcher at the Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that the increase in imports is determined to a greater extent by price factors. Last year China imported 2.24 million tons of rice, which hit the domestic rice market, precisely because the price was cheap.

In addition, Song Hongyuan, director of the Rural Economy Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, pointed out that crop substitution, for example replacing soybean cultivation with rice and corn that have high per-unit yields, can also promote output increases, while in recent years the input of science and technology has been an even more powerful tool for increasing grain.

Professor Wang Zhenlin, vice president of Shandong Agricultural University, said that the potential for science and technology to promote increases remains very large. Taking Shandong Province as an example, this year in a high-yield wheat science and technology research field, Shandong set a national winter wheat high-yield record of 817 kg per mu. At present, the common wheat yield per mu is only about 400 kg.

Technological yield increases are becoming more difficult

In the industry's view, when exploring the “eleventh consecutive increase”, the essential issue is not to argue over whether it increased or not, but to see that the rate of grain increase is slowing.

Since 2011, the rates of grain output increase have been 4.5%, 3.2%, 2.1%, and 0.9% respectively. Compared with the earlier method of relying on increasing the area planted to grain, Zhang Weijian, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that in recent years the pressure on science and technology to increase grain and help per-unit yields has been continuously growing. “This is like high jumping. When the bar is low, it is easy to jump over; when it is high, it becomes increasingly difficult.” Wang Zhenlin said.

The difficulty of variety selection and breeding is a prominent manifestation. Forty percent of grain output increase comes from varieties, which is an industry consensus. However, in recent years, finding varieties with breakthroughs has become increasingly difficult.

Yin Haiqing, a researcher at the Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences who has long been engaged in rice breeding work, knows well how difficult this is. And this comes with pressure from climate conditions as well as changes in production methods and other aspects.

“New varieties must not only be high-yield and stable-yield, but also resistant to natural disasters.” Yin Haiqing said that increasing yields places more and more demands on varieties, but there are not many breakthrough varieties.

In addition, people nowadays are increasingly inclined toward simplified cultivation. For example, changing transplanting to direct seeding has become a very common phenomenon.

“People's production methods tend toward simplification, doing it themselves based on experience.” Zhang Weijian said that if corresponding cultivation techniques, fertilization techniques, and new varieties are not matched to people's choices of production methods, grain output will certainly decline.

Coordinated research to stabilize grain production

Nevertheless, the existing high-yield research trial records still give people great expectations for science and technology.

However, Wang Zhenlin said that many of these high-yield records and high-yield models are premised on relatively high resource inputs, such as higher inputs of water, fertilizer, pesticides, and labor, with relatively low economic returns, and they are still difficult to promote and apply on a large scale in production.

Based on this, Wang Zhenlin said that existing science and technology topics must be more closely aligned with the urgent needs of production, achieving both high yield and high efficiency. For example, how to match established target yields with fertilizer and water use, how to match the timing of fertilizer and water application with crop growth needs, and how to make planting management techniques lighter, simpler, and more efficient and more suitable for mechanized operations, and so on.

Of course, to achieve these goals, only by concentrating limited resources for coordinated research and reducing repetitive work can greater breakthroughs be made.

“At present, scientific research project approval is dispersed. Many research institutions and breeding institutions each do their own work, while basic agricultural research needs to achieve resource sharing and innovation and utilization on that basis.” Yin Haiqing said.

However, China is already exploring the use of platforms such as disciplinary groups, the agricultural industry technology system, the grain high-yield science and technology project, and grain high-yield creation to carry out coordinated scientific research on sustained and stable grain output increases.

In addition, in Wang Zhenlin's view, to increase grain output, in addition to science and technology, a complete modern agricultural management system must also be established. That is, on the one hand, explore high-yield and high-efficiency technologies so that good varieties and good technologies are paired and can be appropriately applied to suitable plots; on the other hand, shift toward an intensive, large-scale, and specialized agricultural management system. “Only with scale can there be standardization, and only then can high yield, high quality, and high efficiency be achieved.”