For today's people, it is difficult to understand what it is like to not have enough food, and it is difficult to understand why farmers in the same rice fields used to have enough to eat, but now they can even eat enough for several years. Speaking of this, I have to mention Yuan Longping, now we can eat enough, most of the reason is due to the cultivation of hybrid rice, after reading the following data, you can understand why Yuan Longping is a great hero of our country.
The above set of data is taken from the statistical table of grain production in our hometown "Huoshan County Chronicle". It can be clearly seen that in the year of the founding of New China, the yield of our Huoshan rice was only 269 catties, note that it is catties, not kilograms. In the 12 years from 1949 to 1960, the highest grain yield was 1957, with a yield of 459 catties, and even this figure was less than one-third of today.
Even in 1973, the highest grain output was only 754 catties, which is still very low compared with today. During the 12-year period from 1961 to 1973, the grain output was also high and low, but on the whole it was higher than the previous 12 years, and the grain yield was not lower than 360 catties, and in the last 12 years, the yield of 360 catties was even relatively high.
Of course, there are two main reasons for the low grain yield: one is that in the past, ordinary conventional rice with low yield was planted, and secondly, in the above-mentioned years, the rural land in the mountainous areas has not been contracted to the households, and it belongs to collective cultivation, so the grain output is relatively low. In the early years of the contract, the grain output was the same, until later after the change to hybrid rice and the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the yield of rice in the mountainous areas gradually increased, and the yield of some rice per mu exceeded 1,000 catties.
In any case, we can still see that today's grain yield of more than 2,000 catties may be considered exaggerated in the past, but it can indeed be achieved today, which must be thanks to Yuan Longping's contribution in the field of hybrid rice, and he is the one we can eat!