China issues alert as drought and heatwave put crops at risk
A drought in China is threatening food production, prompting the government to order local authorities to take all available measures to ensure crops survive the hottest summer on record.
On Tuesday, four government departments issued an urgent joint emergency notice, warning that the autumn harvest was under “severe threat”. It urged local authorities to ensure “every unit of water … be used carefully”, and called for methods included staggered irrigation, the diversion of new water sources, and cloud seeding.
A record-breaking heatwave combined with a months-long drought during the usual flood season has wreaked havoc across China’s usually water-rich south. It has dried up parts of the Yangtze River and dozens of tributaries, drastically affecting hydropower capacity and causing rolling blackouts and power rationing as demand for electricity spikes. There is now concern about future food supply.
Even Pay, an analyst at Trivium China who specialises in agriculture, said her immediate concern was for fresh produce.
“The kinds of fresh vegetables that supply the local markets where people buy their produce each day – that’s the category that is least likely to be in a major irrigation area, and which is not likely to be strategically prioritised in a national push to protect grain and oil feeds,” she said.
Crop losses would also hit supply chains and exacerbate supply problems, Pay said, as a Chinese city’s produce supply was often grown close to that city, but would have to be sourced from further away and could rot on longer journeys.
Pay said the concerns were mainly domestic, and that categories of food that would affect the global markets were “keeping pretty safe”. But she said attention should be paid to rapeseed if the
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