Report from Fujian Provincial Department of Agriculture says that the province has realized increase in grain harvest for the third consecutive year, despite a slight drop in harvestable acreages compared with last year and its insufficiency in arable land per capita. Source from the Department shows that this year's double-cropping late rice of more than 3.2 million mu in area and about 80,000 mu fewer than last year has been largely gotten in, covering 99% of the acreage seeded.
Statistics show new increases in crop-planting area, yield per unit and total output, with grain-planting land of over 19 million mu, 154,000 mu more than last year, an average yield of some 360 kg per mu, 3.8 kg more than the previous year ,and total output exceeding 7 million tons, 128,000 tons more than last year.
Fujian is the third largest province suffering from insufficient grain supply, and also one of the provinces endowed with least arable land per capita. In recent years some 15 million tons of grain are consumed annually in the province, half of which is imported from other regions, which means a big gap between the consumption and the production. Hence successive growth of output is of great significance to the province's food security, bringing higher self-sufficiency rate of food.
The growth of agriculture owes also to strict protection of farmland, culture of high output lands and promotion of super hybrid rice and ratooning rice, enforced in recent years, which has brought about steady increase in yield per unit. Efforts in promoting high-output grain and oil plants contribute greatly to stable grain production , said Jiang Shaofeng, Deputy Director-General of Fujian Provincial Department of Agriculture.
This year, Fujian has set up as many as 83 ten-thousand-mu zones for high-output grain and oil production, with yield of 70 kilograms more than last year every mu. And 50 more such demonstration zones are planned for 2010, with endeavors to realize a new record of rice output per mu of as much as 950 kg.
