ABSTRACT
Allowing three years to recover from internal conflicts, 1952 is a reasonable base year for considering the start of China’s post-war agricultural progress. Between then and 1991, the area defined as under ‘grain’, which includes rice, wheat, maize, soy beans and tubers, as well as millet and sorghum, now less widely grown, dropped from 124 million hectares (306 million acres) sown in 1952 to 112 million (277 million) in 1991. The area under rice changed little after the early 1960s, the wheat area increased slightly, but the maize area almost doubled. Between 1952 and 1991, grain output increased from 164 million tonnes to 435 million (an increase of 165 per cent, or 100 to 265). During that period, population rose from 575 million to 1,158 million (an increase of 101 per cent, or 100 to 201). Grain output per inhabitant therefore rose from 285 kg to 375 kg, not a remarkable achievement compared with that in some regions of the world during the same period, but impressive in view of the tight environmental constraints and the lack of incentives to individuals to produce more until the 1980s.
