A farmer is operating a large combine harvester to harvest wheat in the fields in Zaozhuang, Shandong Province on June 9, 2023. Photo: VCG

China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has vowed to speed up efforts to prevent and combat disasters, in a bid to support the grain harvest for the year and ensure the annual grain output continues to exceed 1.3 trillion jin (650 million tons) this year, Pan Wenbo, an official with the ministry, told a press conference on Friday.

Pan said that the country's grain consists of summer grain, early rice and autumn grain, and the key to supporting the harvest throughout the year is the autumn grain.

In general, the current situation of autumn grain production remains good, with the autumn grain sowing area set to increase to more than 1.3 billion mu (86.7 million hectares). In addition, the growth of corn, rice, soybean and other autumn grain crops remains normal.

"Disaster prevention and mitigation is the key to achieving a good harvest of autumn grain," Pan noted.

July, August and September is the key period for drought, flood and typhoon mitigation tasks, as well as disease prevention and pest control. This year, the extreme weather, drought and flooding as well as insect plague have brought extremely severe challenges for the autumn grain production, Pan said.

In response, the agriculture ministry, together with the Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Emergency Management and the China Meteorological Administration held a video meeting on Wednesday, saying that disaster prevention and mitigation is the current main task for work related to agriculture, rural areas and rural people.

China has seen another year with a bumper summer grain harvest despite the impact of adverse weather. The country's summer grain output totaled 146.13 million tons this year, down 0.9 percent on a yearly basis.

Officials from the agriculture ministry said that the decline was caused by widespread and heavy rainfall in wheat-growing regions in North China in late May. Meanwhile, continuous drought also dragged down the yield per unit area in Southwest China's Yunnan and Guizhou provinces.

"The summer grain output hit the second highest level in history and it is still a bumper season, which will lay a solid foundation for stabilizing annual grain production," Zeng Yande, another official with the ministry, said during the press conference.

Pan said that wheat stocks are currently plentiful and a slight reduction in production will not have a major impact on the grain market.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday stressed efforts to effectively strengthen farmland protection and fully improve farmland quality to expand agricultural production space, according to Xinhua News Agency.

On the same day, Tang Renjian, the agriculture minister, said that the ministry will promote the improvement of the mechanism for guaranteeing the income of grain farmers and the mechanism for compensating the main grain-producing areas.

Global Times