News & Comment

Abnormal weather at harvest time results in wheat lodging and post-harvest sprouting in China’s main wheat-producing areas. Measures such as promoting resistant varieties, using mechanical equipment for harvesting, spraying agents to prevent sprouting, timely storage and drying, screening of already sprouted seeds, timely drainage for farmlands, and full utilization of drying sites can salvage wheat losses. In addition, we have publicly released a spray formula consisting of potassium chloride, abscisic acid, organosilicone, and sodium selenite. This formula is effective and economical for inhibiting wheat germination in high-humidity environments.

Although generally presented otherwise organic agriculture (OA) is much less productive per unit area of land than conventional agriculture (CA) for two reasons. First, because the yields of individual crops grown in OA are generally less than those in CA. Second, because the reliance in OA on organic fertilizer, i.e. plant and animal manures, requires that additional land grown to legumes to provide nitrogen (N) must be included in the calculation of relative productivity. Compared with the commonly used crop-yield ratios of OA/CA productivity of 0.75–0.81, new analyses of the relative food productivity of various crop- and crop-livestock systems presented here report lower values in the range 0.30–0.74 with many less than 0.5. The OA/CA system ratios are higher in less favourable areas and lower in productive areas more suited to crop intensification. The implications for food security and nature conservation place OA at a disadvantage because transformation to OA would require substantial expansion of agricultural land, e.g. an OA/CA ratio of 0.5, would require a doubling of area under OA to maintain equal production. By contrast, higher yields in CA reduce the demand for land in agriculture and consequently can conserve land for nature.