Turning farming around in just 70 years
Print Edition
In his childhood, Zhao Guochun never expected that one day he would need to eat coarse grains to balance his diet because of overnutrition.
Zhao, a 68-year-old from northeast China鈥檚 Heilongjiang Province, suffered from hunger in his early years. He later lived on a diet of coarse grains, and wheat-flour was a treat to be enjoyed only during the Lunar New Year holiday.
Zhao is just one of the hundreds of millions of Chinese people whose fates have been changed by the country鈥檚 great increases in food production over the past decades.
More high-quality farmland, irrigation facilities, technology support and government policies are among the factors behind bumper harvests over recent years.
Zhang Jinghui, who grew 23 hectares of rice at a Qixing farm in Heilongjiang this year, reaped a harvest despite a summer flood. 鈥淲ith flood control measures, we embraced a harvest with the yield reaching 7.5 tons a hectare,鈥 he said.
Zhang, who has worked on the farm for over 30 years, has seen the farmland turn into a high-yield field from a low-lying plot prone to flooding, with the annual yield more than doubling in peak harvest years.
Last year, the Qixing farm, with over 80,000 hectares of farmland, reaped 700,000 tons of grain, mostly rice, of which 98 percent went to the market.
Farmers in Heilongjiang, China鈥檚 largest grain-producing region since 2011, now use more large machinery, including self-driving seeders and harvesters and unmanned pesticide-spraying aircraft, to increase efficiency.
Heilongjiang鈥檚 grain output surged to 75 million tons last year from 5 million tons in the early years of the People鈥檚 Republic of China.
Between 1949 and 2018, China鈥檚 annual grain output rose by nearly five times from 113 million tons to 658 million tons, while per capita output more than doubled from 209 kilograms to 472 kilograms.
China鈥檚 food supply has reached basic self-sufficiency from widespread shortages decades ago. With a population of 1.4 billion, the country has seen the self-sufficiency rates of its major grains of rice, wheat and corn remain above 95 percent.
In the PRC鈥檚 early years, many Western countries were skeptical about China鈥檚 ability to ensure food security but the Chinese people have managed to firmly hold the 鈥渞ice bowl鈥 in their own hands, said Li Guoxiang, a researcher from the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
China now feeds around 20 percent of the world鈥檚 population with less than 9 percent of the world鈥檚 arable land.
China has long been a positive force in ensuring the world鈥檚 food security, said Li. 鈥淐hina鈥檚 eradication of hunger is a huge contribution to global food security,鈥 said Li. China mainly relies on itself for food supply, but it has actively taken part in global cooperation by offering the world its own solutions and experiences.
鈥淎 great departure from a grain recipient in the PRC鈥檚 early years, China has become a main provider of technological aid and other grain solutions for many countries in the Global South,鈥 said Li.
In May, the China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center opened its African research branch in Madagascar to select hybrid rice varieties based on the island nation鈥檚 diverse ecological environment, in a bid to find more productive crops for a continent long troubled by insufficient grain output.
Georges Ranaivomanana, a 55-year-old Madagascan farmer, has benefited from planting Chinese hybrid rice in his town of Mahitsy.
鈥淲e鈥檙e no longer suffering from hunger,鈥 he said, adding that he hoped his compatriots would use these seeds to raise their living standards and his country might even be able to export rice someday.
Last year, China pledged to support Africa in achieving general food security by 2030. China aims to share its experience in agricultural development with Africa and transfer readily applicable technologies, said Peter Smerdon, spokesperson of the World Food Program Regional Bureau in Nairobi, Kenya.
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