Farming Season Does Not Wait For The The Yellow River Valley: Spring Plowing And Broadcasting Work Is In Full Swing.

Farming time waits for no man. Recently, Hebei, Shandong and other places have been doing a good job in preventing and controlling the epidemic while vigorously promoting agricultural production to ensure a good harvest of summer grain.

Hebei province actively promotes seed, fertilizer, pesticide, feed and other agricultural enterprises to accelerate the resumption of production and rehabilitation. By the end of March 8th, over 90% of the enterprises involved in farming, husbandry and fishing resumed, and the capacity recovery was also about 50%. With the vigorous support of the policy, the work of spring plowing and broadcasting has already started in all parts of the country.

In Hebei, Cangzhou, Hengshui and other places, the main work of the farmers is fertilization, irrigation and spring ploughing. At present, the progress is quicker, and it is expected that the preparation of spring sowing will be completed in mid March. However, according to the cotton farmers in two places, the cotton area is expected to be worrisome this year. There are two reasons: first, cotton farmers in 2019/20 are in a bad situation, and most cotton growers do not benefit from growing cotton. For example, a cotton grower in Hengshui has 13 mu of cotton in 2019, with an average yield of 510 Jin per mu, and the average price of seed cotton is 3.05 yuan / kg, and the gross income is 1555.5 yuan / mu. Two, a big social background is that farming is better than working, and working for a month can reach the harvest of a year. Therefore, most of the young workers give up agricultural production. Especially in the past two years, most villages only have old, weak, young and disabled, and there is basically no cotton growing with relatively complex technology.

Data show that in 2019 Hebei cotton area of 3 million 60 thousand mu, compared to 3 million 156 thousand acres in 2018 dropped by about 100 thousand acres. It is estimated that the cotton area in Hebei will be reduced to below 3 million mu in 2020, a new low in recent years.

Coincidentally, up to now, Shandong's cotton spring sowing has not yet started, but preparations for spring sowing are already in progress. According to the heads of many seed companies, cotton seed purchases this year are much inferior to those of previous years. On the one hand, it may be related to the epidemic this year. Many cotton farmers have not made up their minds this year whether to grow cotton or not. On the other hand, the cotton farmers' enthusiasm for planting cotton is not high this year. The reason is still low income, high cost and little profit.

Shandong province is the cotton producing area of China's seed cotton, and is also a very important cotton processing and cotton textile industrial base. Before 2016, the output of cotton was over 550 thousand tons, but the area and output decreased from 2017 to 20 in 2019.