China's Agriculture Ministry is campaigning to bring farmers up to speed on the latest seeds and techniques so they can achieve higher crop yields. The details suggest that a core part of the plan is to accelerate the consolidation of farms into larger mechanized operations to replace fragmented plots cultivated by aging villagers using outdated techniques. A Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) video conference on September 25 explained that Xi Jinping has decreed that raising grain yields across broad areas of farmland will be central to boosting grain production capacity in "the new situation." All agricultural departments and communist party organizations were therefore instructed to elevate yield-improvement over broad areas as a key priority. A Chinese State Council press conference on September 16 announced that 702 counties were chosen this year to implement a broad-area yield improvement plan (粮油作物大面积单产提升行动). The objective is to disseminate seeds, ...
Retired USDA economist Fred Gale peers through the "dim sums" of puzzling data to provide insight about China's agricultural markets in bite-size pieces like Chinese "dim sum" snacks. See the Archive and Labels for posts on various topics going back to 2008.