June 3, 2011

The severe drought that plagued the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River will mainly cut the harvest of early-season rice, but will hardly affect China's total grain output this year, a top researcher said.

Early-season rice makes up a tiny proportion of the country's summer grain output, while the autumn harvest produces the majority of China's annual grain output, said Cheng Guoqiang, a senior researcher at the Development Research Centre of the State Council.

Drought-stricken provinces such as Hubei and Jiangxi are not China's major wheat producers. The drought will have a negligible impact on the summer grain output, although early-season rice cannot be planted in certain areas, and some paddy fields have no water after the crop has been planted due to the drought. Furthermore, water shortages have also affected the transplantation of mid-season rice seedlings.

In terms of China's grain production structure, grain and rice output in the six southern provinces, including Jiangxi and Anhui, accounts for only 27% and 18%, respectively, of the country's total. Furthermore, the extent of damage caused by the drought in the six provinces varies and the early season rice-growing zones have yet to be significantly affected by the drought.

A research report released by the Agricultural Bank of China on May 30 also made it clear that it is unlikely the drought in southern China will seriously affect grain prices and CPI in the second half of 2011.

Experts said that China is self-sufficient in grain supply and can gain a small surplus in normal years. China's grain supply structure needs to be balanced through import and export, but the export and import volume is limited. For instance, the import volume of wheat, corn and rice are all below 1% of their domestic output.

Minister of Agriculture Han Changbin also announced favourable news during the recent launching ceremony of machine-aided cross-region wheat collection. He said that 80% of summer grain in southwestern regions has been reaped and the wheat in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain has entered into maturity. Experts at the Ministry of Agriculture said that the summer grain production will have a good harvest in 2011 and the winter wheat output is expected to grow for eight consecutive years. The output of rapeseed to be reaped in the summer will also pick up.