page_title: Economy of China
section_title: Agriculture
hierarchical_section_title: Economy of China / Sectors / Agriculture
caption_attribution_description: English: People fishing on a system of ponds constructed on a bay of the Daye Lake, on, on the south sude of the Daye Town (Huangshi CIty, Hubei). Not sure if one has to buy a ticket to fish there, or if it's free-for-all. 中文: 湖北省黄石市大冶市,人钓鱼 Русский: Рыболовы на прудах у города Дае (городской округ Хуанши, провинции Хубэй)
context_page_description: The economy of China has transitioned from a centrally-planned system to a more market-oriented economy since 1978 or earlier, which as of 2019 ranked as the second largest in the world by nominal GDP and as of 2017 the largest in the world by purchasing power parity. China has the world's fastest-growing major economy, with growth rates averaging 10% over 30 years. As of 2018, China's private sector accounted between 70% and 80% of the GDP; the private sector is also responsible for 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs. According to the IMF, on a per capita income basis, China ranked 73rd by GDP per capita in 2019. China's GDP was $14.3 trillion in 2019. The country has natural resources with an estimated worth of $23 trillion, 90% of which are coal and rare earth metals. China also has the world's largest total banking sector assets of around $40 trillion with $27.39 trillion in total deposits. It has the fourth-largest inward foreign direct investment, and the eleventh-largest outward foreign direct investment. China has the world's second-highest number of billionaires with total wealth of $996 billion.
context_section_description: China is the world's largest producer and consumer of agricultural products – and some 300 million Chinese farm workers are in the industry, mostly laboring on pieces of land about the size of U.S farms. Virtually all arable land is used for food crops. China is the world's largest producer of rice and is among the principal sources of wheat, corn (maize), tobacco, soybeans, potatoes, sorghum, peanuts, tea, millet, barley, oilseed, pork, and fish. Major non-food crops, including cotton, other fibers, and oilseeds, furnish China with a small proportion of its foreign trade revenue. Agricultural exports, such as vegetables and fruits, fish and shellfish, grain and meat products, are exported to Hong Kong. Yields are high because of intensive cultivation, for example, China's cropland area is only 75% of the U.S. total, but China still produces about 30% more crops and livestock than the United States. China hopes to further increase agricultural production through improved plant stocks, fertilizers, and technology.
  According to the government statistics issued in 2005, after a drop in the yield of farm crops in 2000, output has been increasing annually.
  According to the United Nations World Food Program, in 2003, China fed 20 percent of the world's population with only 7 percent of the world's arable land. China ranks first worldwide in farm output, and, as a result of topographic and climatic factors, only about 10–15 percent of the total land area is suitable for cultivation. Of this, slightly more than half is unirrigated, and the remainder is divided roughly equally between paddy fields and irrigated areas. Nevertheless, about 60 percent of the population lives in the rural areas, and until the 1980s a high percentage of them made their living directly from farming. Since then, many have been encouraged to leave the fields and pursue other activities, such as light manufacturing, commerce, and transportation; and by the mid-1980s farming accounted for less than half of the value of rural output. Today, agriculture contributes only 13% of China's GDP.
  Animal husbandry constitutes the second most important component of agricultural production. China is the world's leading producer of pigs, chickens, and eggs, and it also has sizable herds of sheep and cattle. Since the mid-1970s, greater emphasis has been placed on increasing the livestock output. China has a long tradition of ocean and freshwater fishing and of aquaculture. Pond raising has always been important and has been increasingly emphasized to supplement coastal and inland fisheries threatened by overfishing and to provide such valuable export commodities as prawns.
  Environmental problems such as floods, drought, and erosion pose serious threats to farming in many parts of the country. The wholesale destruction of forests gave way to an energetic reforestation program that proved inadequate, and forest resources are still fairly meagre. The principal forests are found in the Qin Mountains and the central mountains and on the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau. Because they are inaccessible, the Qinling forests are not worked extensively, and much of the country's timber comes from Heilongjiang, Jilin, Sichuan, and Yunnan.
  Western China, comprising Tibet, Xinjiang, and Qinghai, has little agricultural significance except for areas of floriculture and cattle raising. Rice, China's most important crop, is dominant in the southern provinces and many of the farms here yield two harvests a year. In the north, wheat is of the greatest importance, while in central China wheat and rice vie with each other for the top place. Millet and kaoliang (a variety of grain sorghum) are grown mainly in the northeast and some central provinces, which, together with some northern areas, also provide considerable quantities of barley. Most of the soybean crop is derived from the north and the northeast; corn (maize) is grown in the center and the north, while tea comes mainly from the warm and humid hilly areas of the south. Cotton is grown extensively in the central provinces, but it is also fou
caption: Fish ponds near Daye, Hubei
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