What is the most abundant crop in China?
History of agriculture in the People's Republic of China
China Proper is divided by the Qinling range into highly dissimilar north and south agricultural areas. In semitropical south China, rainfall is relatively abundant and the growing season long. Rice has been the predominant grain crop. The paddies can generally be irrigated with water from rivers or other sources. Although much of the soil is acid red clay, the heavy use of fertilizer (at one time organic but by the mid-1980s also including a large proportion of chemical nutrients) supports high yields. Frequently two or even three crops a year are cultivated on the same land. Food crops other than rice are also grown, most frequently in hilly areas or during the winter. These include potatoes and winter wheat. The highest grain yields in the country in the mid-1980s were generally found in the Sichuan Basin, the lower Yangtze River Valley, and Guangdong and Fujian provinces, where multiple cropping of rice and other crops was the typical pattern. Cotton, tea, and industrial crops were also produced there.
Renewable energy in China
China emerged as the world's third largest producer of ethanol-based bio-fuels (after the U.S and Brazil) at the end of the 10th Five Year Plan Period in 2005 and at present ethanol accounts for 20% of total automotive fuel consumption in China. In the 11th Five Year Plan period (2006 through 2010) China planned to develop six megatons/year of fuel ethanol capacity, which is expected to grow to 15 megatons/year by 2020. Despite this level of production, experts say that there will be no threat to food security, though there will be an increasing number of farmers who will be "farming oil" if the price of crude oil continues to increase. Based on planned ethanol projects in some provinces in China, the output of corn would be insufficient to provide the raw material for plants in these provinces. In the recently published "World Economic Outlook", the International Monetary Fund expressed concern that there would be increasing competition worldwide between bio-fuels and food consumption for agricultural products and that that competition would likely continue to result in increases in the price of crops.