Autumn harvest in full swing, bumper year expected

For Zhao Jincheng, a grain grower in east China's Shandong Province, a bumper harvest is certain for the year as a whole.

Zhao, in Houguai Village, Qihe County, has just completed the harvesting of his 120 mu (8 hectares) of corn, located in the core area of the county's 300,000 mu of high-quality farmland. His land is equipped with various smart devices that monitor the situation regarding soil moisture, crop growth and insects.

The average yield of corn per mu is more than 950 kg, about 150 kg more than last year, said Zhao.

"The corn harvest is very good. This is another bumper year," said Zhang Jiwang, a professor at Shandong Agricultural University, who measured the yield during the harvesting.

By Saturday, Shandong had completed the harvesting of more than 58 million mu of autumn grain crops, or nearly 90 percent of the total, according to the Shandong Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

Nationwide, the country has seen more than 60 percent of autumn cropland harvested. Local yield records have been set on several testing or demonstration farms.

On a demonstration plot measuring 200 mu in Hinggan League, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the soybean yield reached 303.5 kg per mu, a record high for dryland soybean in the region, according to the region's authorities. The soybean output of the region ranked second in the country last year.

On a plot of demonstration farmland in the city of Dongying, Shandong, the average yield of a new salt-tolerant soybean variety was more than 270 kg per mu, much higher than that of similar soybean varieties.

"Our country boasts large areas of saline-alkali land with agricultural utilization prospects, and cultivating new varieties of salt-tolerant soybeans is an important new direction to improve soybean production capacity," said Tian Zhixi, a researcher at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Autumn harvests have also been satisfactory in some regions hit by droughts over the summer.

Tao Jinyin, a farmer in Xinglong Village, in the city of Tianchang, east China's Anhui Province, expected the output of his rice field to reach the same level as last year.

"With the prolonged heat this year, such a yield is hard to come by. Thanks to the government's effective measures to ensure irrigation, our crops have grown well," said Tao.

Statistics from the Anhui agriculture and rural affairs department show that by Oct. 12, the province had completed the harvesting of around 43 million mu of autumn grain crops, or 67 percent of its total.

China has had another bumper summer grain harvest this year, with a total output of 147.39 million tonnes by the end of June, an increase of 1.43 million tonnes over the previous year's summer grain production.