Farmers prepare to harvest wheat in Gaoqing county, Shandong province, on June 11. WANG KEJUN/FOR CHINA DAILY

Wheat production bases seize on good weather to minimize impact of rain

The wheat harvest is in full swing across China, with major production provinces including Henan, Jiangsu, Shaanxi and Shandong using the good weather to organize machines and farmers to harvest the crop day and night.

Over 15.9 million hectares of winter wheat had been harvested by Sunday, accounting for 75 percent of the total growing areas, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

Machines are being widely used this year to promote efficient harvesting work and reduce grain losses.

Henan has basically completed its wheat harvest this year, which involves 5.67 million hectares of wheat, thanks to machine harvesting the rain-hit wheat fields and drying the soggy grain to minimize losses, according to the province's department of agriculture and rural affairs.

The province encountered prolonged periods of rainy weather, which affected the harvest. It put 4 million pieces of machinery into operation, including 216,000 combine harvesters, to ensure an efficient harvest, according to the department.

After the rain, the wheeled combine harvesters couldn't operate properly, so the province brought 30,000 crawler harvesters to harvest the crop, while 4,660 dryers operated day and night to dry grain.

Yards, squares, government courtyards and parking lots in several cities of Henan are being used for drying wheat.

In Shandong, north of Henan, 56.2 percent of its four million hectares of wheat had been harvested by Sunday, according to the Shandong Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

At the Xiaoli subdistrict of Jinan in Shandong, more than 466 hectares of land in the Yellow River flood plain was reclaimed and sowed with wheat last year. Harvesters have started to collect the grain on the reclaimed land, which is the first year the land has been used to produce wheat.

This year, Shandong subsidized farmers to install automated driving systems and Beidou navigation system on agricultural machinery to promote efficient harvest work and reduce grain losses.

"The harvesters are able to help me save 5 kilograms of wheat grain each mu (0.067 hectares), which would be lost if we didn't use smart harvesters," said Yu Leyi, a wheat grower in Linshu county of Shandong.

He grew more than 66 hectares of wheat this year, which means the use of harvesters that are equipped with navigation systems and automated driving systems is able to increase grain production by 5,000 kilograms this year, he added.

In the wheat fields of Qianchai village in Xintai, Shandong, combine harvesters are followed by corn seeders that plow and sow corn seeds into the stubble.

To better coordinate the supply and demand of agricultural machinery, Ningyang county of Shandong has piloted a sharing model that collects information about farmers and agricultural machines through agricultural cooperatives in the county, and then dispatches and allocates the machines according to demand.

"The agricultural machinery sharing data ensures a timely harvest for wheat growers," said Hou Dianchen, director of the county's agriculture and rural affairs bureau.