The provincial agricultural department of Henan province in northern China has reported the best winter wheat crop quality in recent years as new crops have begun to sprout.
More than 89% of the current crop in China’s largest wheat-growing province has a good-to-excellent rating as of this Monday, according to the provincial department of agriculture. The share was up 12 percentage points year on year.
In comparison to the recent-year average, the share of good-to-excellent ratings was also up 3.2 percentage points.
According to the state-backed newspaper Henan Daily, farmers in the province described the current crop as “the best in recent years”.
The portion classified as a poor condition only accounted for 8.7% this year, down 13.6% percentage points compared to last year. It was also down 4.1% compared to recent years.
Henan province is at the heart of China’s wheat-growing region, and the crop quality in the province is critical for overall wheat output each year.
The province has a total planted wheat area of 85 million mu (5.67 million hectares) this year.
The 2021/22 old crop wheat faced serious setbacks as cold weather conditions and low usage of fertilizer due to high prices significantly weakened the average yield.
At one stage, Chinese farmers sold premature wheat crops before harvest in May to feed producers as they feared that poor crop yields would negatively impact the prices of wheat harvest at maturity.
In response, the Chinese government allocated a large amount of funding to support wheat crop planting and growth this year.