For the fifth straight year in a row, China's summer grain output
looks set to fall, with farmers hit by a series of natural
disasters and shrinking growing area.
Predictions for this year's production of summer grain -- largely
wheat -- has been put at 95 million tons, down by 4 million tons on
last year, said Jiang Xiangmei, an official with the Ministry of
Agriculture.
Twenty percent of China's grain output consists of summer grain.
The rest comes from crops harvested in the autumn.
The latest survey in 26 wheat-producing provinces, municipalities
and autonomous regions has found that crop planting areas for
summer harvests are 25.8 million hectares, down by 6.3 percent from
2002, said Jiang.
But the country is expected to bring in more top-grade wheat, as
the acreage devoted to high-quality crop strains accounts for 34
percent of the total wheat-growing fields, up 7 percentage points
on a year-on-year basis, she said.
Jiang said the chronically low price of grain in the market has
prompted an increasing number of farmers to reserve more arable
land for more lucrative crops like rapeseed plants.
Dwindling grain growing areas, drought in north China and regions
along the Yellow and Huaihe rivers, coupled with persistent
overcast and rainy weather in the south of China this spring, have
also badly impacted summer grain production, said Jiang.
In
1999, China harvested 118.5 million tons of summer grain. Since
then both growing areas and harvests have been diminishing,
statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics indicate.
Asked if the harvest of summer crops will be influenced by the
outbreak of SARS, Jiang said rural authorities have been organizing
teams of tractors and harvesters to help bring in the crops. These
moves mean that seasonal migrant workers, currently in various
cities across the country, can remain where they are, rather than
risk spreading SARS by returning to their home villages.
Han Jun, a senior expert with the State Council Development
Research Center -- a leading government think-tank, said he
believed the fall in harvests will not affect the domestic market
situation, where grain supply outstrips demand, largely because of
huge stockpiles.
Neither will it lead to an increase in grain imports this year, as
the grain price on the world market is still high, and supply of
domestic high-quality grain varieties is relatively abundant.
(China Daily May 29, 2003)