Changes in Planting Scale of Flue-cured Tobacco Production Regions in China in Recent 20 Years

Based on the data of flue-cured tobacco production in China from 2001 to 2020, the growth and decline of planting scale and the change of planting status in different tobacco producing regions were analyzed synthetically, and the classification of tobacco regions and the shift of planting scale were compared and demonstrated. The results showed that there were 22 provinces planting flue-cured tobaccos in China in the last 20 years and the great fluctuations of "three ups and three downs" in change of the total production scale with the overall trend of "up and down". The national planting area was 0.943 million hectares in 2001, reached the peak of 1.41 million hectares in 2013 with fluctuation rising year by year, and then declined year after year, to 0.887 million hectares in 2020. The 22 production regions were divided into four types according to the similarity of the increasing or decreasing trend of area percentage and planting scale of each province. Compared with 2001, the proportion of planting areas in Yunnan, Sichuan and Hunan increased by 12.2, 5.4 and 2.5 percentage points respectively in 2020, while that in Guizhou, Henan, Shandong, Shaanxi, Heilongjiang, Chongqing, Jilin and Guangdong decreased by 5.8, 4.9, 2.2, 1.7, 1.5, 1.4, 0.7 and 0.7 percentage points respectively. The growth and decline of the national tobacco planting scale and the shift of the planting scale mainly occurred among those 11 provinces, whereas the change and influence of other provinces were negligible. The method of producing region classification based on the similarity of change trend and the analysis of the growth and decline of planting scale on different producing regions were proposed in this paper for reference of understanding and studying the overall arrangement and adjustment of national flue-cured tobacco planting scale and the policy decision of future development plan.