How Much More Yield Potential Can Be Tapped from a Bumper Grain Harvest?
This year, the 620,000 mu of wheat in Gaoqing County, Shandong Province, enjoyed another bumper harvest, with an average yield of 504.3 kg per mu, up 2.02 kg per mu from last year, marking the 14th consecutive bumper summer grain harvest. With grain harvests bountiful year after year, many people wonder whether this streak of consecutive increases can be sustained and how much potential remains to be tapped. In interviews, agricultural department officials, agricultural experts, large grain growers and ordinary farmers gave their own answers.
How Much Low- and Medium-Yield Farmland Is Waiting to Be Developed?
North of Zhongdian Village in Heili Zhai Town there is a plot of land called "Wazi," meaning the land here is low-lying and prone to waterlogging when it rains. "This plot depends on the mercy of the weather. In drought we harvest grasshoppers, in floods we harvest toads, and income is unpredictable. In a normal year, three to four hundred kg per mu is considered good. Last year, a comprehensive agricultural development project was carried out here, and 'Wazi' became a 'high-yield zone,' with five to six hundred kg becoming the normal yield," said villager Guo Shaoqing.
Li Peng, deputy director of the Gaoqing Comprehensive Agricultural Development Office, said that Gaoqing farmers habitually call the project areas for low- and medium-yield farmland improvement under comprehensive agricultural development "high-yield zones." Through comprehensive treatment of ditches, canals, roads, shelterbelts, bridges, culverts and sluice gates in low- and medium-yield farmland, the projects ultimately achieve "irrigation in drought and drainage in flood," laying the foundation for bumper harvests.
This year, actual yield verification organized by the agricultural department with experts showed that grain output in the high-yield zones increased by 10%-30% over ordinary grain fields, with an obvious yield-boosting effect. Gaoqing is one of the 19 districts and counties in the "Yellow River Delta." Its soil was once saline-alkaline and barren. After more than ten years of continuous development by departments including comprehensive agricultural development, land and resources, and water conservancy, agricultural production conditions have improved greatly, which is the main driver behind consecutive grain output increases.
To date, Gaoqing still has more than 100,000 mu of low- and medium-yield farmland that needs improvement, and this is also where grain yield potential can be tapped quickly. At the same time, after agricultural projects are implemented, there is also the issue of "post-construction management and maintenance." "Facilities within the development zones are damaged every year, and this requires 'management and maintenance' to maintain the land's sustained high-yield capacity. In recent years, Gaoqing has explored introducing new types of operating entities such as agricultural enterprises and farmers' cooperatives to take on the management and maintenance of facilities after project implementation, with very good results," Li Peng said.
How Much Can Be Done on the Front of "Scale"?
Zhang Shuguang, a farmer in Shali Village, farms at home during the busy agricultural season every year and works away from home during the slack season. The days he spends farming at home amount to just 3 months at most. "Whether the grain yields a few hundred jin more or less doesn't matter to me. I earn more than 3,000 yuan a month from working away from home, which is equivalent to a year of farming," Zhang Shuguang said.
The reporter found in interviews that in rural areas, quite a few people share Zhang Shuguang's "doesn't matter" attitude toward land. Du Zuozhong, deputy director of the Gaoqing County Agriculture Bureau, said that farmers' attitudes toward land have now diverged. Those who work away from home do not count on farming, while the left-behind women and elderly who farm at home do so because of a land attachment, and they do not much mind whether the grain yield is high or low. What "minds" now are new types of operating entities such as grain-growing cooperatives, family farms and specialized large growers. "A hundred or so jin more per mu looks like a small number, but with more mu it becomes a big number. What large grain growers want is the benefit of scaled grain production."
In recent years, Gaoqing has promoted integrated high-yield technologies such as wide-width precision sowing, postponed nitrogen fertilizer application and "one spray, three preventions," and new types of operating entities engaged in scaled grain production have adopted them quickly, but left-behind elderly people and women who farm are not very active, and they are still accustomed to using old methods and old routines in farming.
Du Zuozhong said that the article on "scale" still needs to be done well. First, rely on scaled operations, continue to steadily advance land transfer, guide land management rights to concentrate in the hands of large grain growers, family farms and grain cooperatives, and cultivate new types of grain production and operating entities. Second, rely on scaled services, accelerate the cultivation of socialized service entities such as agricultural machinery cooperatives and specialized unified pest and disease control teams, promote new socialized service models such as land trusteeship, and let specialized service organizations "help farmers farm."
How Many "High-Yield Secrets" Need to Be Promoted?
In Taili Village, Changjia Town, and surrounding villages, Li Hongwu, chairman of the Fengrao Grain Planting Professional Cooperative, is a famous grain grower. Last year, the cooperative's grain planting area reached 600 mu, with wheat and corn yields reaching 1,360 jin and 1,400 jin per mu respectively.
"My high-yield secret is to apply the 'three waters' well," Li Hongwu said. The "three waters" are wheat overwintering water, green-up water and grain-filling water. Grain growing stresses solar terms, and at each solar term, the necessary measures must follow. For example, he said, last December they generally applied overwintering water to the wheat in the fields, and the wheat seedlings were in very good condition. Many farmers, afraid of the cold and finding it troublesome, hoped for snow to save this round of watering, but not a single snowflake fell. Especially in wheat fields with straw returned to the field, if overwintering water is not applied, the wheat seedlings are generally weak.
In Hougong Village, Tianzhen Subdistrict, large grain grower Gong Ximin's secret is mixing farmyard manure with chemical fertilizer. His practice is to apply one tractor-load of cow manure per mu when sowing wheat in autumn. When sowing corn in summer, he topdresses another bag of diammonium phosphate along with sowing. "Topdressing at sowing, we call it 'one blast.'" Because he insists on applying farmyard manure, his land has especially strong fertility, and yields are higher than those of ordinary farmers.
"Many large grain growers have figured out high-yield secrets that suit them," Du Zuozhong said. "In fact, most of these secrets coincide with the county's main promoted technologies. It is just that through farmers' practice and summarization, the names are a bit rustic, but they are very suitable for promotion."
Du Zuozhong introduced that how to transform main promoted agricultural technologies into "high-yield secrets" that farmers understand at once and readily accept has become Gaoqing's main approach to getting through the "last kilometer" of agricultural technology extension. Gaoqing integrates the "Good Seed Project," "Fertile Soil Project," "Green Countryside Project" and the "Agricultural Science and Technology Entering Villages and Households Demonstration" activity, formulates different "high-yield secrets" according to different crops, and by opening a special "Green Countryside" program on television and printing "clear-understanding sheets" to distribute to villages, groups and households, delivers these down-to-earth technologies into farmers' hands. "If these 'high-yield secrets' are all promoted, total grain output will increase greatly," Du Zuozhong said.