Sichuan becomes the country's third-largest tobacco leaf production base

This summer, the once-barren hills of Sihe Village, Lake Township, Xide County, Liangshan Prefecture, were covered with pristine white greenhouses. Inside, tender green tobacco seedlings were growing vigorously - according to the latest news from the Provincial Tobacco Monopoly Bureau, as of now, all 1,347,100 mu of tobacco leaf planting across the province has been completed, with the planted area increasing by more than 150,000 mu compared with last year, setting a new high in recent years.

Last year, among the nation's newly added 2 million dan tobacco leaf purchase plan, Sichuan alone took half the share, which also enabled Sichuan to overtake provinces such as Fujian and Hunan in one leap to become the country's third-largest tobacco leaf production base after Yunnan and Guizhou. This year, among the nation's newly added 1 million dan purchase plan, Sichuan again obtained 1/4 of it. It is reported that the newly added tobacco leaves were mainly planted in 4 newly developed tobacco areas including Yanyuan County and Xide County in Liangshan Prefecture and Miyi County in Panzhihua.

In addition to the substantial increase in planting area and purchase plans, a series of new technologies are also being widely applied. In Luzhou, a technique called flue-cured tobacco sand seedling raising has replaced the traditional peat seedling raising technique, thereby reducing dependence on and use of peat, a non-renewable resource; in Liangshan, Panzhihua and Luzhou, floating seedling raising, which helps improve the strong-seedling rate of tobacco seedlings and the transplant survival rate, has been fully promoted; in Miyi County, Panzhihua, the history of relying solely on coal for flue-curing tobacco will end, replaced by the centralized use of 5 energy sources: solar energy, biogas, coal, straw and electricity.

Sichuan, committed to promoting a "strong province in both tobacco leaf and tobacco products," cannot do without either quantity or quality in tobacco leaf planting. From 1998 to 2008, the proportion of high-grade tobacco in Sichuan rose from 3.03% to 56.1%. This year, this figure will still remain at around 50%. At the same time, the structure of tobacco leaf varieties is also changing - the planting area of Yunyan 85, which once occupied half the total, has been sharply reduced, while the planting proportion of new varieties such as Hongda has increased markedly. Relevant parties stated that the adjustment will also help tobacco farmers increase their income. According to estimates, this year tobacco farmers' income is expected to rise to around 3 billion yuan, an increase of about 500 million yuan over last year.

This year will also be a year of rapid development for modern tobacco leaf agriculture. Figures show that over the past 4 years, the province has invested a cumulative total of 2.022 billion yuan to carry out infrastructure construction for tobacco leaf production. This year, such investment will reach as high as 1.7 billion yuan. In addition to continuing to provide high subsidies for tobacco farmers to purchase machinery and equipment, infrastructure construction such as tobacco-water supporting facilities and mechanized farming roads will still be key priorities, among which, for the single item of building more than 20,000 new curing barns, the investment amount alone will reach more than 500 million yuan. These curing barns are used to grow edible fungi during idle periods.