Favorable weather and mechanized ops aid wheat harvesting nationwide

China's wheat harvest has nearly reached the 70 percent mark nationwide, aided by favorable weather conditions in recent days and extensive mechanized operations, agricultural authorities said.

As of Tuesday evening, farmers had harvested 15.53 million hectares of winter wheat, accounting for 68.54 percent of the country's summer grain crop, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

Harvesting has been completed in Anhui province, while the neighboring Henan province has largely completed its harvest. Progress has exceeded 80 percent in Jiangsu province, 45 percent in Shandong province, 30 percent in Shaanxi province, and nearly 20 percent in both Shanxi and Hebei provinces.

Weather conditions have generally favored harvesting efforts.

Most wheat-growing areas experienced sunny or partly cloudy skies recently, although scattered showers and thunderstorms affected parts of Hebei and northern Shandong.

Officials said wheat in those areas has largely not yet reached full maturity, giving local authorities additional time to get harvesting machinery and logistics ready.

Local governments have been urged to coordinate harvesting equipment and take advantage of dry weather windows to ensure mature wheat is harvested and dried promptly.

Anhui, one of China's major grain-producing provinces, reported that its wheat harvest was complete. Mechanized harvesting accounted for 99.5 percent of operations in the province.

According to the provincial department of agriculture and rural affairs, about 170,000 high-performance combine harvesters were deployed during the harvest season.

Large-scale harvesting began on May 29 and was essentially completed by Sunday, about two days earlier than last year.

Local authorities attributed the rapid progress to favorable weather, improved mechanization and the expansion of high-standard farmland.

By the end of 2025, Anhui had built 4.3 million hectares of high-standard farmland, accounting for nearly 78 percent of its total cultivated land and providing ideal conditions for large-scale mechanized harvesting.

In Chenxiaozhai village in Fuyang, village committee director Chen Ping said the village's 378 hectares of wheat yielded more than 9,000 kilograms per hectare on average this year.

"More than 99 percent of the harvest was completed mechanically," Chen said. "We started harvesting on May 28 and finished in less than four days, while in previous years, harvesting usually began around June 1."

Chen said the early harvest resulted from favorable planting conditions last autumn, effective disease-control measures using agricultural drones, and digital services that allow farmers, village officials and machinery operators to coordinate harvesting through mobile platforms.

Meanwhile, purchases of newly harvested wheat had reached nearly 1.5 million metric tons by Saturday, according to provincial food and strategic reserve authorities.

Anhui readied more than 15 million tons of storage capacity and more than 28.8 billion yuan ($4.24 billion) in funding to support summer grain purchases. According to authorities, credit guarantee programs are also helping grain traders, processors and feed producers participate in market procurement.