China: Drought Cutting Into Wheat Yields
Pan Fuzhong, a 37-year-old farmer living in China’s central Henan Province scoops up a handful of dirt from his wheat field and lets the gray dust sift between his fingers.
“I’ve never seen such a severe drought. Some seedlings are yellow and some are dead,” he says.
In normal years, the wheat would be green and higher than his ankles at this time.
Though the authorities used cloud-seeding technology to create rain on Saturday, Pan’s 6 mu (0.4 hectare) harvest will still be well down.
He thinks he will lose 600 kg, or 1,080 yuan ($158US) in income, as a result of one of China’s worst droughts on record.
Pan and other farmers also have the extra costs of electricity and water fees to irrigate their crops or the price of irrigation machinery.
According to the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, extremely low rainfall since late October has created an unusual drought in north China, traditionally the country’s breadbasket.
As of Monday, about 136 million mu (9.1m hectares) of winter wheat in eight major producing provinces was affected, of which 36 per cent, or 49m mu, was seriously affected. What’s more, 3.5m people and 1.66m livestock had no access to drinking water.
Henan, which produces a quarter of China’s wheat, is worst hit. Since October, it has seen about 10 mm of rain, 80 per cent less than average, making it the worst drought since 1951. The provincial government says about 43.5m mu of wheat is affected, 8.7m seriously. In neighboring Anhui Province, drought has hit 25.9m mu of wheat crops.
Agriculture Minister Sun Zhengcai said Friday in Anhui that more than 2.3m mu of seedlings in Anhui, Henan and Shandong had died.
He warned the dry spell was forecast to continue and cause more losses.
Rain and mild temperatures in spring are key to determining wheat yields. Most of China’s wheat production is in the North China Plain in central and eastern areas, which has been susceptible to drought.
The Agriculture Ministry has no estimates of wheat yield losses this year, but a senior weather official said on 3 February that production was likely to be down 2 – 2.5 per cent from last year, when China produced around 110m tons of winter wheat.
Xiao Ziniu, director of the National Climate Center of the China Meteorological Administration, has warned the “once-in-a-half-century” drought will continue until next month.
The Anhui provincial government says the drought has caused losses of 1.6 billion yuan. Henan has published no estimated losses, but Party chief Xu Guangchun said the drought had affected people’s livelihoods and could undermine social stability.
“The drought is adding difficulties to an already grim economic situation owing to the impact of the global financial crisis,” he said.
The futures market and investors quickly reacted to the prospect of lower yields. On 9 February the major wheat futures for March delivery closed at 2,056 yuan per ton at Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange in Henan. It rose 6.1 per cent, or 118 yuan per ton, in the nine trading days since 21January.