(Yicai Global) Aug. 25 -- China’s harvest of early-season rice, the crop gathered in early July, increased 2.7 percent from the same time last year, despite a moderately smaller area having been planted, according to the latest statistics.

The harvest reached 28 million tons of rice, the National Bureau of Statistics said today, with an average of 5,918 kilograms per hectare, versus 5,745 kg a year ago. The increased yield was mainly due to favorable weather conditions in the main growing regions.

But bad weather during the seeding period and plantation structure changes in some main production areas trimmed the total area of land planted by 16,600 hectares to 4.7 million hectares compared with last year.

In 2020, the provinces of Anhui, Hubei and Jiangxi saw their yield per unit area decrease significantly due to severe flooding, said Li Suoqiang, head of the NBS's Department of Rural Surveys, adding that the situation went back to normal this year.

Most of China’s southern provinces grow rice twice a year because of the favorable local climate. This year, the early-season rice harvested in the provinces of Hunan, Jiangxi and Guangdong, as well as Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, made up 86 percent of the national total.

China’s harvest of summer crops -- cereals, legumes and tubers -- gained 2.1 percent from last year to hit a record 145.8 million tons, largely due to higher yields and a greater area of land used, according to the data the NBS released last month.

Based on different harvest times, the NBS divides China's grain production into three: summer grain, early-season rice and autumn grain. The autumn grain harvest, mainly corn, late-season rice, soybean and tuber crops, account for more than 70 percent of the country’s total.

Editor: Futura Costaglione