Boron deficiency puts crops at risk
Provinces in southwest China grow a range of crops that are essential for both domestic consumption and worldwide demand. Rice, China’s most important crop, is dominant and can yield two or three harvests per year. This area also includes about 85% of China’s total rapeseed planting area.
Sichuan province produces more rice and rapeseed than any other province in the country. Other principal cash crops are citrus fruit and natural silk. Sichuan's sugarcane crops also have an important place in national production. Cultivation is characterized by crop diversity, intensive land use, extensive terracing and irrigation, and special methods of soil culture, fertilization, composting, and crop rotation.
In Yunnan province, the region’s mild climate and high rainfall support a wide variety of crops. However, the region is mountainous and level land is scarce, so farming is restricted to a few upland plains, open valleys, and terraced hillsides. Rice is the primary crop, although growers also produce corn, barley, wheat, rapeseed, sweet potatoes, soybeans, tea, and sugarcane.
Yunnan’s temperate climate is perfect for growing arabica coffee, making it the largest coffee producer in the nation and positioning China as the thirteenth largest coffee grower in the world (Time, 2018.) Tobacco, another primary export product, contributes greatly to the province’s economy.
In Guizhou, China’s poorest province, rice is the most important crop, followed by corn, wheat, barley, potatoes, oats, and broad beans. Growers here are starting to increase their production of industrial crops, the most important of which is rapeseed, followed by tobacco, peanuts, and sugarcane.