October 11, 2011

China had reaped 599 million mu (15 mu equal one hectare) of autumn grain crops by October 3, which represent 51.7% of the total planting area, the Ministry of Agriculture said.

Autumn grain harvesting has entered the peak period, the ministry added.

Thanks to favourable weather conditions in northeast China, the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, a major grain production base in the country, had harvested 52.8% of the grain crops, with the pace 10.2 percentage points faster than that for the same period of last year.

In the meantime, grain crop harvesting in southwest China had reached 70.3% of the total, the same as the year-earlier period, an official with the Ministry of Agriculture said.

However, harvesting in the provinces of Hubei, Jiangxi and Hunan in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River had been slower than in the same year-earlier period, with 39.9% of the crops harvested by October 3, down 1.8 percentage points over the same period of 2010, due mainly to rains recently.

By crop, the ministry said, harvesting had been completed on 155 million mu or 56% of the total single-cropping rice, 223 million mu or 44.5% of the total corn, and 73.88 million mu or 65.2% of the soy planting area.

The ministry also said autumn and winter planting had been made on 88.6 million mu of cropland, or 12.5% of the planned total, with the progress identical to that of last year.