Li Chengyu remembers clearly his biggest challenge when he took over the post of vice-governor of Henan province in 1992.

Historically known as the "Central State", where for millennia the Yellow River has nourished some of the oldest farms on Earth and spawned the earliest traces of the Chinese civilization, the province was fighting to keep its people, then numbering more than 90 million, properly fed.

Li, who was in charge of the province's agricultural development program from 1992-95, said, at that time, at least 10 million people every year were facing food shortages.

Today, Li, who has been governor since 2003, is proud to say Henan is China's granary, and the first province since 1949 to export wheat and flour.

"Some of the flour used to make bread for fast-food giant McDonald's in New Zealand and the Philippines is supplied by Henan," Li told China Daily at yesterday's NPC session.

According to official figures, Henan's farms last year yielded 52 billion kg of grain - mostly wheat and corn - making the province the country's top producer for the eighth straight year.

Also, over the past five years, the province has risen from fifth spot to second, behind Shandong, on the nation's food processing chart, Li said.

That means Henan is now capable of feeding not only its own people - whose number exceeds 100 million - but also has a surplus for distribution throughout China or even overseas, he said.

The province will continue to strengthen its "comprehensive productivity" in agriculture by promoting the planting of quality wheat and rearing quality livestock, which it has been doing for the past 10 years, Li said.

Wang Liuzhu, deputy director of the agricultural office of the standing committee of the Henan people's congress, said: "Substantial scientific and technological support has been used along with a legal framework to ensure agricultural development.

"The research and use of quality wheat seed has almost doubled the yield of conventional seed."

With high quality wheat, the yield per hectare can be as high as 6,750 kg, Wang said. Last year, the average across the country was 3,717 kg per hectare, while the world average was about 2,720 kg.

Of Henan's 500,000 hectares of wheat land, more than 300,000 are planted with high-yield seed, he said.

The quality of the wheat grown in the province has also increased to meet international standards, Li said.

In October 2003, when China's grain yield exceeded demand for a few years, Henan was able to export 5,000 tons of quality food grain to Indonesia.

Since then, the province has been exporting flour made from surplus wheat to bakeries in the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand.

On the subject of the recent freezing weather, Li said that while the snow had destroyed a number of farmers' homes, some snow was actually beneficial to the wheat crop.

"We are expecting our grain production to grow over the coming year," he said.

(China Daily March 7, 2008)