The national early rice output fell 0.9% in 2015 compared with the same period last year.

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 21 (Reporter Wang Xi) according to the national early rice production data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on 21 August, the national early rice output this year was 33.691 million tons (67.38 billion jin), 320000 tons less than in 2014 and 0.9 percent lower than the same period last year.

According to a survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics, the sown area of early rice this year is 5715.4 thousand hectares (85.731 million mu), a decrease of 79.5 thousand hectares or 1.4 percent over 2014. The national yield of early rice per unit area is 5894.8 kg / ha (393.0 kg / mu), an increase of 25.6 kg / ha over last year, an increase of 0.4 percent.

With regard to the reduction in the sown area of early rice, Hou Rui, a senior statistician in the Rural Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, believes that on the one hand, drought occurred during transplanting of early rice in some areas, affecting the cultivation of early rice; on the other hand, due to the low efficiency and high labor intensity of planting early rice, some farmers changed from double-cropping rice to single-cropping rice. This year, due to the reduction of sown area, the national early rice output has been reduced by 467000 tons.

She said that as the overall agrometeorological conditions in most areas are good, and relevant local government departments continue to support early rice production through unified breeding, centralized seedling raising, and specialized unified control of diseases and insect pests, the per unit yield of early rice has increased slightly this year.

The early rice yield data published by the National Bureau of Statistics are obtained by two ways: the province as the overall sampling survey and the key survey in the main early rice producing areas. The main producing areas include Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, and Guangxi. The survey teams of the National Bureau of Statistics selected more than 150 national survey counties (cities) from the eight major producing provinces (regions) to carry out sample survey. the total output accounts for more than 97% of the country's total early rice output. The data of early rice in non-main producing areas of Hainan, Yunnan and Sichuan were calculated by the relevant investigation team according to the key investigation.