China's summer grain output at record high

A reaper harvests wheat in Liugou village, Ganyu county, East China's Jiangsu province, June 12, 2013. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, China has harvested 210 million mu (about 14 million hectares) of winter wheat, which accounts for more than 60 percent of the total. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING - China's summer grain output hit a record high of 136.60 million tons in 2014, up 3.6 percent from last year, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.

The total planting area for summer grain crops expanded 0.1 percent from the previous year to 27.6 million hectares, the NBS data showed.

China's summer grain crops, mainly wheat and early-season rice, usually account for about 20 percent of its annual grain output. Autumn grain crops, which include corn and middle- and late-season rice, account for the remaining 80 percent.

NBS senior analyst Huang Jiacai pointed out that climate conditions had been very favorable to wheat production this year, resulting in a higher per-unit yield of wheat.

The latest bumper harvest of summer grain may help ease concerns about China's ability to feed its 1.3 billion people amid soaring cereal imports in recent years.

Though cereal imports rose to more than 14 million tons in 2013, that accounted for less than 2.6 percent of the country's cereal output, according to the ministry of agriculture. In 2013, the country's grain self-sufficiency rate stood above 97 percent.

China also has a "red-line" guarantee that the amount of land dedicated to arable farming shall never shrink to less than 120 million hectares.