China's 2016 grain output falls

Grain output in China, the world's top grower of wheat and rice, slipped 0.8 percent to 616.2 million tonnes in 2016, after farmers planted less corn following a change in farm policy, official data showed on Thursday. Corn output fell to 219.6 million tonnes from 224.6 million a year ago, in line with forecasts, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.
The drop was driven by a 3.6 percent decline in acreage after China ended a stockpiling scheme that paid artificially high prices, forcing farmers to sell direct to market. Soyabean acreage rose by 10.7 percent, but corn yields per unit of land are more than three times the level of soyabeans so the jump in soya could not compensate for the drop in corn planting, the bureau said. Heavy rainfall also impacted crops in the south, the bureau said, causing rice output to fall to 206.9 million tonnes from 208.3 million tonnes last year.