North Korea's grain production likely to grow this year

North Korea's grain production is expected to rise slightly this year, a report said Friday, possibly higher than initially estimated. According to the report from South Korea's Rural Development Administration (RDA), the North's overall grain production in the 2013-2014 harvest year is expected to reach 4.81 million tons, up 3 percent from 4.68 million tons tallied in the 2012-2013 period. The rise comes partly from an increase in rice output, which is estimated to gain 2.9 percent on-year to 2.1 million tons. The figure has a gap with an earlier estimate from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which forecast the communist state's rice output to reach 1.7 million tons this year, slightly better than the annual average of 1.6 million tons. "The weather in North Korea this year had been more favorable to the growth of crops (than last year) as the average temperature between May and September came to 19.9 degrees Celsius, 0.3 degrees higher than that of last year, while the country's overall precipitation also rose 7.5 percent on-year to 1,001.5mm over the cited period," the RDA said in its report. The report said the North's corn output was also expected to have gained 1.7 percent on-year to 1.76 million tons this year. The FAO earlier forecast the North's corn output to reach 2.3 million tons. North Korea suffers from chronic food shortages with the average amount of rice and corn consumed by the people said to be only half of the daily consumption recommended by the United Nations