China’s corn output rose 4.6 per cent in 2021 from the previous year to stand at 272.6 million tonnes, the statistics bureau said Dec. 6.
The annual official number came as the market closely watched the new corn crop in the world’s second-largest consumer of the grain, after the planting acreage rose on soaring prices.
Chinese farmers dumped other crops for corn to cash in on record prices during the planting season, though heavy rains in the north hit the harvest, lowering output and damaging the quality of some of the crop.
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China’s 2021 corn-planting acreage was up five per cent from the previous year at 650 million mu (43.32 million hectares), thanks to the rising prices, the bureau said in a separate statement on its website, citing an official.
Corn yield in 2021 fell 0.4 per cent from a year earlier, as flooding in the Huang-Huai-Hai river area hit crops there, bureau official Wang Minghua said in the statement.
China’s Agriculture Ministry saw corn output in the new crop year at 270.96 million tonnes, up four per cent from 260.67 million the previous year.
Total grain output rose two per cent from the previous year to 682.9 million tonnes in 2021, the statistics bureau said.
Wheat output was at 136.9 million tonnes, with acreage and yield both rising from 2020, it added.
