II. Agriculture

In 2008, the sown area of grain was 106.70 million hectares, an increase of 1.06 million hectares as compared with that in the previous year; the sown area of cotton was 5.76 million hectares, a decline of 170 thousand hectares; the sown area of oil-bearing crops was 12.71 million hectares, an increase of 1.39 million hectares; the sown area of sugar crops was 1.93 million hectares, an increase of 130 thousand hectares.

The total output of grain in 2008 was 528.50 million tons, an increase of 26.90 million tons or up by 5.4 percent over the previous year. Of this total, the output of summer crops was 120.41 million tons, up by 2.6 percent, and that of the early rice was 31.58 million tons, maintaining the same level of the previous year. The output of autumn grain was 376.51 million tons, an increase of 6.7 percent.

In 2008, the output of cotton was 7.50 million tons, a decrease of 1.6 percent over the previous year, that of oil-bearing crops was 29.50 million tons, up by 14.8 percent and that of sugar crops was 130.00 million tons, an increase of 6.7 percent, that of tobacco was 2.60 million tons, up by 19.6 percent, and that of tea was 1.24 million tons, up by 6.4 percent.

The total output of meat for the year reached 72.69 million tons, up by 5.9 percent. Of this total, the output of pork was 46.15 million tons, up by 7.6 percent, and that of beef and mutton was 6.10 and 3.76 million tons, down by 0.5 percent and 1.8 percent respectively. At the end of the year, 462.64 million pigs are registered in the total stocks, up by 5.2 percent, and 609.60 million pigs are slaughtered, up by 7.9 percent. The production of milk was 36.51 million tons, up by 3.6 percent; the total output of eggs was 26.38 million tons, up by 4.3 percent.

The total output of aquatic products was 48.95 million tons, up by 3.1 percent. Of this total, the output of cultured aquatic products was 34.26 million tons, up by 4.5 percent; and that of fished aquatic products was 14.69 million tons, maintaining the same level of the previous year.

The total production of timber for the year 2008 reached 78.94 million cubic meters, an increase of 13.2 percent.

Over 1.179 million hectares of farmland was increased with effective irrigation systems and another additional 1.390 million hectares of farmland was guaranteed by water-saving irrigation systems.