Grain bumper harvest project boosts agricultural disaster prevention, with unconventional measures
From late May to early June, just as wheat enters the grain-filling stage, consecutive rainy and overcast days caused wheat in many places to show symptoms such as blackened ears, sprouted kernels, poor grain filling, and reduced grain weight. However, in the demonstration and extension areas of the National Grain Bumper Harvest Science and Technology Project in Jiangsu, the wheat grown by farm owners and large grain growers still had plump, full kernels.
Zhu Xinkai, a doctoral supervisor at the College of Agriculture of Yangzhou University, told reporters that even in the face of the same natural disasters, whether scientific planting is practiced and whether scientific responses are valued makes all the difference in the degree of loss caused by natural disasters.
"In response to late sowing of wheat, especially the consecutive severe rainy and overcast weather, our expert service team began visiting demonstration and extension areas in southern, central and northern Jiangsu from March, issuing early warnings and repeatedly urging farm owners and large grain growers to be sure to spray trace elements or liquid fertilizer on schedule, in order to prevent high-temperature forced ripening and promote an increase in grain weight," Zhu Xinkai said.
Jiangsu province plants more than 32 million mu of wheat. Some farm owners and large grain growers guided by agricultural technicians followed the experts' advice and basically suffered no losses. But for the vast number of small-scale grain farmers, due to a lack of scientific response methods, problems arose after the early arrival of high temperatures in May. Wheat quality declined and yields dropped, directly affecting the purchase price of wheat. This year, in some places in Jiangsu, the wheat purchase price was less than 5 jiao, far below the national basic protective price for grain, and some grain stations were even unwilling to buy it.
Yaojia Village, Diaoyu Town, Xinghua City, is where Jiangsu province is advancing the National Grain Bumper Harvest Science and Technology Project, and is one of the demonstration areas for the ultra-high-yield cultivation research project of precise mechanical transplanting of rice pot seedlings, jointly implemented by Yangzhou University and the Xinghua City Agricultural Technology Extension Center. On this same patch of land, a stable ultra-high-yield record was created with a 100-mu contiguous area exceeding 800 kg per mu for 10 consecutive years in a rice-wheat double-cropping system, and an ultra-high-yield record of over 900 kg per mu was stably achieved for 4 consecutive years. Last year, the highest-yielding field there reached 1017.7 kg per mu, setting China's highest rice yield record in rice-wheat double-cropping regions.
Zhang Hongcheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and deputy head of the Rice Expert Steering Group of the Ministry of Agriculture, believes that the key to Yaojia Village's ability to stably achieve ultra-high yields lies in the most direct support provided by high-yield varieties and advanced agricultural technology, along with effective contingency plans prepared in advance for possible severe weather, ensuring the growth and harvest of rice.
Zhang Hongcheng told reporters that during the implementation of the "12th Five-Year Plan" National Grain Bumper Harvest Science and Technology Project, Yangzhou University, the Jiangsu Province Crop Cultivation Technology Guidance Station, the Jiangsu Province Agricultural Machinery Technology Extension Station, Changzhou Yameike Machinery Equipment Co., Ltd. and other units, targeting the major technical problem of the low productivity and difficulty in achieving high yields of the original rice tray-raised blanket-like small seedling mechanical transplanting, adopted a method integrating agricultural machinery and agronomy. Through special research on key technologies such as the improvement of rice machinery and seedling trays under different rice regions and multiple rice cropping systems, as well as ultra-high-yield cultivation research, they systematically clarified the production advantages, growth and development characteristics, and (ultra-)high-yield formation patterns of rice pot seedling mechanical transplanting, and established a precise high-yield cultivation technology system for rice pot seedlings.
But not all farmland is as fortunate as the areas covered by the National Grain Bumper Harvest Science and Technology Project. During interviews following relevant experts, reporters found that in some major grain-producing areas, water conservancy project construction is inadequate, and the ditches and canals in grain fields are not unobstructed. Whenever consecutive rainy and severe weather occurs, rainwater cannot be drained away, causing mature wheat, rice and other grain crops to soak in water. Due to the "fragmentation" of agricultural production, the collective grain-drying yards and warehouses of the past have basically disappeared. The wheat and rice that scattered grain farmers rushed to harvest after the rain have nowhere to be dried, lack drying equipment, and have nowhere to be piled, greatly affecting the harvest and quality of grain and causing secondary disasters.
Experts suggest that governments at all levels should take measures to strengthen farmers' awareness of scientific farming, increase the dissemination of new agricultural technologies and methods, and promptly adopt effective measures to fundamentally solve the problems of the shortage of scientific and technical personnel, technology, and supporting facilities on the agricultural front line, as well as the "fragmentation" problem constraining agricultural production.
"In particular, agricultural water conservancy facilities must keep up faster, the transfer of scattered grain fields should be accelerated, family farms for grain production should be vigorously developed, and scattered farmland should be turned into large plots suitable for commercial cultivation, implementing joint planting, joint management and joint operation, so as to fundamentally solve the bottleneck constraining grain production, safeguard farmers' interests in multiple ways, stimulate the enthusiasm of large grain growers, and drive the development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers to a higher level," Zhang Hongcheng said.