"Despite slight wheat acreage reduction, grain production is
expected to rise by 3 percent year-on-year, thanks to favorable
weather and policy support," said Ministry of Agriculture policy
advisor Wang Xiaobing on Monday.
Wheat accounts for nearly 90 percent of the crops harvested in
summer. Summer grain, in turn, accounts for less than a quarter of
China's total grain production, Wang said. He declined to release
the ministry's forecast for this year's summer grain output.
According to the
National Bureau of
Statistics, 96.2 million tons of summer grain were harvested
nationwide last year.
Based on surveys of the ministry's Remote Sensing Application
Center, Wang said each hectare is expected to yield at least 150
kilograms more than last year, raising total wheat output by 2.5
million tons.
"The predicted output growth will further reduce the likelihood
that China will import large amounts of wheat this year," said Han
Jun. Han is a division director of the State Council Development
Research Center, a leading government think-tank.
In its recent World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates,
the US Department of Agriculture projected that China's wheat
imports would be 8 million metric tons for the wheat marketing year
beginning June 1.
But Han said China has been using its wheat stocks to balance
supply and demand, and wheat imports have been used to replenish
the stocks rather than for direct consumption.
Domestically, wheat prices are as much as 40 percent lower than
in the global market, Han said. The price factor and positive wheat
output forecasts mean China will be unlikely to import as massively
as some exporters expect.
For several years, many bakers and millers in China have
imported high-quality wheat for bread and baked goods. That
scenario has changed, as China reserved 9.3 million hectares of
farmland for special and top-grade wheat strains last year, an
increase of 12.5 percent over the previous year.
The ministry sent a record number of combine harvesters to bring
in the wheat on 10 million hectares by Sunday, accounting for half
of the country's total wheat production area.
Subsidies, slashed agriculture taxes and other policies have
given wheat producers incentive to up output, Han said.
Redoubled efforts to control wheat pests and diseases have also
helped increase production, said Zhu Enlin, director of the
ministry's Agrotechnical Extension Center.
Governments at various levels have spent at least 100 million
yuan (US$12 million) to check wheat diseases, including the
devastating "yellow rust," Zhu said.
The anticipated bumper summer harvest has buoyed the Ministry of
Agriculture's confidence in producing 455 million tons of grain in
2004, a key year to recover grain production and to avert the
detrimental reverse of the supply-demand relationship, said
Wang.
Production of wheat, corn, rice and other food grain dipped from
a record high of 512 million tons in 1998 to 435 million tons in
2003.
"If you have a bumper summer harvest in hand, you have gained an
advantageous position for the whole year," Wang said. "Otherwise,
you'll have to consider using the autumn harvest to offset losses
from the summer."
But Han said the current situation gives no reason for optimism.
"It is still too early to draw a (rosy) picture for the whole year,
since grain output for the whole year is determined by multiple
factors," he said.
(China Daily June 8, 2004)
