Summer grain output tops last year's

Summer grain output hit a record high of 136.60 million metric tons in China this year, up 3.6 percent from last year, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday.

The total planting area for summer grain crops expanded 0.1 percent from the previous year to 27.6 million hectares, the NBS data showed.

China's summer grain crops, mainly wheat and early-season rice, usually account for about 20 percent of its annual grain output. Autumn grain crops, which include corn and middle- and late-season rice, account for 80 percent.

NBS senior analyst Huang Jiacai said that climate conditions had been extremely favorable to wheat production this year, resulting in a higher per-unit yield of wheat.

The latest bumper harvest of summer grain may help ease concerns about China's ability to feed its 1.3 billion people amid soaring cereal imports in recent years.

Although cereal imports rose to more than 14 million tons in 2013, that accounted for less than 2.6 percent of the country's cereal output, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. In 2013, the country's grain self-sufficiency rate stood at above 97 percent.