The net income per capita of China's rural residents in the first half of this year increased 8.1 percent year-on-year, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in a statement posted on its Web site Friday.
A report surveying 68,000 rural households in the country's 31 provinces shows farmers' net income per capita in the first quarter reached 2,733 yuan ($400.12) per year, according to the NBS.
Farmers' salary income per capita, which mainly includes a farmer's earnings from working in a local or urban enterprises, reached 954 yuan per year, up 8.4 percent year-on-year.
Farmers' cash income from selling agriculture products per capita grew 4.1 percent year-on-year to 1,124 yuan, said the report.
In 2008, farmers' net income per capita was 4,761 yuan, a growth of 8-percent over the previous year, according to a survey released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the country's government think tank in April.
China's agriculture industry has kept a sound momentum in the first half of this year despite adverse influence brought by the global downturn and drought, as the government has been improving favorable policies to farmers, said Agriculture Minister Sun Zhengcai in a national agriculture meeting Friday.
The central fiscal has so far allocated 123 billion yuan in subsidizing farmers' purchase of seed, diesel, fertilizers and other production materials this year, rising 19.4 percent over the previous year, according to Sun.
