The U.S. Grains Council (USGC) is blogging and Flickring through this year’s China Corn Tour, taking place right now.

These great photos and many more have been posted on the USGC Flickr account by Erick Erickson, special assistant to the president, who has also been blogging about the trip on The Grain Board. In one post Erick wrote about the harvest, which is all done by hand and takes a typical farmer about ten days.

We met several farm families at work in the fields. One man told us he has a 3.7 acre allotment and rents an additional 21 acres. He does not like to use machines for planting or harvesting because labor is less expensive and more efficient – for instance in collecting corn stalks that may have fallen over. Twelve acres of the rented land is controlled by the local government, so it is not counted on the records and he receives no government subsidy. He said it takes 10 laborer-days to harvest 2.5 acres of corn. That means a husband-wife team can harvest their 3.7 acres in about eight days.

We met such a team working in their field: 21 rows wide by 400 meters long. They stopped to talk to us when we approached and showed us the size of ears they were harvesting, indicating that they should be at least a third bigger. They had been working steadily and now they stopped and visited with us – animated, smiling, filled with life. After our visit, we walked away and they returned to their work, cutting corn stalks one at a time and laying them in neat rows, bottom end to the wind.

Pretty interesting stuff – check it out.