(12 September 2000) The government's target for this year's grain production is 490 million tons, which should be enough to go around, according to Xu Xiaoqing, deputy chief of the Rural Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council. 

Xu estimated a minimum harvest of 480 million tons would meet the country¡¯s basic needs, reports Jingji Cankao Bao (Economic Information Daily).

Cultivated land in China hovers around 1.68 billion mu (280 million acres) producing approximately 570 million tons of grain per year. In western China, there are 570 million mu (93.9 million acres) of cultivated land, about a third of the mainland¡¯s total. 

Current plans to return about 50 million mu (8.3 million acres) of cultivated land to forest will reduce grain output by around 10 billion kilograms (2.2 million tons), only 2 percent of the nation¡¯s total, based on 200 kilograms of output per mu. 

The report stipulated that the reforestation scheme would not cause any grain shortages.