China's wheat total production and per-unit yield increases both hit an 8-year high

According to a report by CCTV.com, building on the high base of consecutive years of grain production increases, China's wheat has again achieved a bumper harvest this year, with the increases in both total production and per-unit yield reaching their highest levels in 8 years, making it the only one of the three major staple grains to achieve 11 consecutive years of increased production.

The latest statistics show that this year the national winter wheat output reached 11989.9 million tons, an increase of 3.5 percentage points over last year. This increase of 404.5 million tons of wheat, calculated at two liang per steamed bun, is equivalent to adding 33 steamed buns to every person's dining table across the country. On the basis of ten consecutive years of increase, why has China's wheat been able to maintain its momentum of increased production?

In fact, in recent years, due to rising rural labor costs, the returns from growing grain, especially wheat, are far less than before. In order to ensure that grain farmers do not lose out, the state has introduced targeted support policies, steadily raising the minimum purchase price of wheat for 7 consecutive years, and in the autumn of 2013 announced the good news of an increase of 6 fen per jin, safeguarding the wheat planting area.

National policies safeguard the area, while scientific and technological services safeguard the per-unit yield. In recent years, the widespread return of straw to fields in the Huang-Huai-Hai region has made the land more fertile; the “one spray, three preventions” technology promoted and applied across the national winter wheat region has effectively controlled pests and diseases, dry hot winds, lodging and so on. Under the effect of scientific and technological services, wheat quality has generally improved, and the per-unit yield has also increased by 3.6 percentage points, reaching 354.7 kg per mu.

And under the support of science and technology, the advantages of major wheat-producing areas have been further brought into play. To combat drought, Henan added more than 10 million mu of irrigated land, enabling the whole province to still achieve a large increase in production under the unfavorable condition of low spring rainfall; to seize the farming season, Funing, a major grain-producing county in Jiangsu, innovated with a one-stop harvesting and sowing service, shortening the original half-month autumn harvest and autumn sowing period to three to five days; to tackle high yields, high-standard large square fields were built in the fields of Dezhou, Shandong, with per-mu yields exceeding the national average by half. With a series of scientific and technological measures in place, the five provinces of Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shandong and Hebei together increased wheat production by more than 3 million tons, accounting for more than 70 percent of the national wheat increment.

The central government proposed implementing a new national food security strategy and firmly holding the Chinese people's rice bowl, and wheat, as one of the three major staple grains, must be safeguarded. The Ministry of Agriculture stated that in the future it will continue to improve the minimum purchase price policy for wheat, strive to stabilize the wheat area at more than 340 million mu, vigorously promote scientific and technological progress to increase per-unit yield, accelerate the implementation of the National Overall Plan for the Construction of High-Standard Farmland, give priority to transforming low-yield areas at 33 degrees north latitude, and further tap the potential for increasing wheat production.