A farmer airs harvested corn in Binzhou City, east China's Shandong Province, Oct. 29, 2023. (Photo by Chu Baorui/Xinhua)
BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- The global production of bulk grain and oil crops saw a year-on-year increase in 2023, according to the 2023 annual report on the remote-sensing monitoring of the global ecological environment, which was made public on Friday.
The report, issued by China's Ministry of Science and Technology, shows that the impact of extreme global events on the production of bulk grain and oil crops was relatively mild in 2023. It is estimated that the total annual output of the aforementioned crops was around 2.87 billion tonnes, which would be a year-on-year increase of 14.14 million tonnes, or 0.5 percent.
However, due to reduced grain production in 2022 and tightened export policies in several major export countries, the global supply of bulk grain and oil crops has decreased.
Drought is the main disaster that affects grain production, said Wu Bingfang, a researcher at the Aerospace Information Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He noted that many measures have been taken since the 1980s in areas around the world that are major producers of corn, rice, wheat and soybean. Measures have included guaranteed irrigation, conservation tillage, the application of mulching film, planting structure adjustments and the selection of drought-resistant seed varieties. These measures have significantly improved the drought-resistance of farmlands, Wu said.
The report covers three topics: the impact of global land-cover change on carbon loss and carbon uptake, the global production of bulk grain and oil crops and the food security situation, and the changes and impacts of snow and ice in the Antarctic, Arctic and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau regions. ■