Spring has arrived, and along with it comes the farming season in many parts of China. As an ancient Chinese proverb goes, "One needs to sow the seeds in spring to see a bumper harvest in autumn," and in rural areas around the country, people are beginning their work in the fields.
Henan, a major agricultural province in central China, has been renowned for its abundant grain production since ancient times, with Luoyang, now a major city in the province, having served as China's capital in 13 dynasties.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, with the advancement of modern agricultural technologies and management systems, Henan has continued to make a strong contribution to China's agriculture and national grain security.
Henan's total grain output amounted to 67.194 million tons in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 1.4 percent; and the output has remained over 65 million tons for eight consecutive years. In particular, its production of wheat, a main staple food crop for Chinese people, accounted for one quarter of the national total. Wheat yield in the province was 6.67 tons per hectare, a year-on-year growth of 6.8 percent.
"Henan has made many remarkable achievements in accelerating the modernization of its agriculture. By taking a wide range of measures, including optimizing the agricultural structure, promoting high-quality grain projects, protecting farmland and enhancing soil fertility, developing high-standard farmland, facilitating the circulation of grain, and carrying out land use system reforms, we have not only consolidated our position as a strong agricultural province but are also steadily achieving the goal of rural revitalization," Sun Weifeng, head of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Henan Province, told newspaper People's Daily in January.
Tech at the core
According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA), in 2024, the country's total volume of grain output reached 706.5 million tons, with technological innovations contributing 63 percent of the progress.
Innovation has also been a key contributing factor in Henan's success in grain production.
In 2022, Henan unveiled a plan on the construction of an international agricultural innovation hub, Zhongyuan Agricultural Valley, which brings together nearly 60 national- and provincial-level innovation platforms, including the National Innovation Center for the Biobreeding Industry and the Shennong Laboratory, two leading institutions in agricultural innovation. Over the past three years, more than 160 new varieties of seeds developed at the hub have been approved as meeting national and provincial standards for improved or new varieties.
The successful hybridizing of wheat with a grass species known as crested wheat grass, Agropyron cristatom, is a case to the point. There was a time when the genetic improvement of wheat primarily relied on the cross-breeding of existing varieties. However, long-term inbreeding led to increasing genetic similarity. To overcome the bottleneck, wheat breeding scientists turned to hybridizing it with the grassspecies to develop new varieties.
"The two species are genetically distant, and there is a significant difference in their flowering periods, which led to difficulties in their hybridizing throughout last century," Li Lihui, a researcher at the Institute of Crop Sciences under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told newspaper Workers' Daily. "However, with the supportive policies of Zhongyuan Agricultural Valley, we have successfully cultivated this new variety at the experimental base in Xinxiang."
Another driving force of progress in agriculture is the highly mechanized production process. While official data show that the national comprehensive mechanization rate for crop cultivation, planting and harvesting is over 75 percent, that of Henan Province has exceeded 88 percent.
"Currently, Henan ranks first nationwide in terms of the use of basic agricultural machinery, including tractors and other supporting vehicles. Henan is also striving to promote the development of advanced agricultural machinery and equipment industrial chains. With a group of national key laboratories for smart agricultural power equipment in place, Henan is accelerating the research and development of advanced, applicable, efficient, low-loss, intelligent and eco-friendly modern agricultural machinery and equipment." Sun said.
"We also intend to assign more subsidies to rural households for the purchase of smart and high-end agricultural machinery, which will make it easier for rural residents to embrace the latest technology and increase their grain production," Sun added.
People at the heart
Agricultural development is giving a boost to farmers' incomes. In 2024, the per-capita disposable income of rural residents nationwide reached 23,119 yuan ($3,167), representing a year-on-year growth of 6.3 percent. The income gap between urban and rural residents has been narrowed, with urban incomes now 2.34 times those in rural areas.
The increase of rural incomes is one of the key targets of China's rural revitalization strategy. This national strategy, introduced in 2017, aims to promote comprehensive development in rural areas, with basic goals including boosting economic and social development, enhancing ecological sustainability and promoting integrated urban-rural development. Luanchuan County in Henan, for instance, has boosted residents' income through developing agricultural businesses.
Located in the hinterland of the Funiu Mountains, Luanchuan was extremely poor throughout the 20th century due to its inconvenient transportation and its dependence on crop planting. In recent years, the county has taken steps to increase local people's incomes by developing industries such as diversifying and deep processing of agricultural products and building agricultural product brands. In 2019, the county was lifted out of poverty.
"We have been building brands and promoting local agricultural products through developing unified standards, packaging and pricing for our products. In 2024, our regional brand Luanchuan Impression, involving 13 agricultural enterprises, drove income growth and provided jobs for more than 20,000 households," Li Shuangsong, Chairman of Luoyang Chuanyu Agricultural Development Co. Ltd., an agricultural business that operates in Luanchuan, told Workers' Daily.
Meanwhile, "The government has intensified efforts to increase rural incomes and protect rural residents' enthusiasm for farming by addressing issues in production, sales and trade," Han Wenxiu, Director of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, told People's Daily. "To ensure rural income levels, we will continue to implement the minimum purchase price policy for major crops, promote soybean sales and processing, and stabilize market prices in major agricultural provinces, including Henan, Heilongjiang and Anhui. Additionally, we will continue to stabilize the subsidy policy for protecting the fertility of cultivated land and improve the subsidy policies for corn, rice and soybean producers."
"We will reduce the proportion of agricultural insurance premiums currently paid by farmers in major grain-producing counties while maintaining the overall insurance coverage and standards. This will promote the expansion of full-value insurance coverage for rice, wheat, corn and soybeans," Han said. BR
