Cambridge, southwestern Nebraska | I was in China in late March of 2013. Based on latitude and the weather we experienced when there I would say Henan could be planting now and Hubei would be getting close to planting in the next couple of weeks. We had the opportunity to travel to the main corn growing area of Heilongjiang in northeast China and in late March there was still snow on the ground. I would say it is very similar to northern Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. They will probably be planting in a month or so.
China has a lot of acres of production and it is done mostly by manual labor. Average size of farm of 1.2 acres would not surprise me. We saw wheat fields being fertilized by hand by carrying a bag of fertilizer and tossing it out on the wheat. But we did see a large, modern state run farm of 50,000 acres that had the latest in John Deere and CaseIH equipment. I think the plan for China is to wait out the existing farmers and eventually mechanize their agriculture. Then they will be much more productive. Currently, most of the younger generation has moved to the cities and the government knows they have to leave the present generation of farmers on the land because they have no place for them in the cities. When they die off then I would expect a major transition to large mechanized farms. |
Question on Chinese corn planting dates.
