Heavy rain has interrupted the wheat harvest in central Henan Province, one of China's most important grain production areas. Farmers are rushing to harvest close to 57,000 square kilometres of wheat fields affected by the wet weather. Xia Ruixue travelled to Nanyang, one of the worst hit areas, to see the impact on local farming communities.
Farmers in southern parts of Henan Province were expecting a bumper golden harvest this year. But six days of unusually heavy rain has ruined their hope. Most of the wheat has turned black and fallen to the ground.
And unharvested grain has sprouted due to the wet conditions. From the sky, the area looks like burned out farmland.
Local authorities say they haven't seen such bad weather leading up to the summer harvest in the past 10 years.
The rain damage has raised concerns about a fall in production and crop quality this year. Wet and sprouted grain can only be used for animal feed or to make alcohol. And the price is also being driven down. Farmers in Nanyang estimate they'd normally get 2.5 yuan for one kilograms of harvested wheat. But on Wednesday, the same quantity of wet wheat sold for a third of the price and slightly more if it had been dried.The poor weather has also made it hard to carry out large-scale harvesting.What's worse, more rain is forecast in the coming days. And farmers are rushing to salvage what crops they can.
YE YUEFENG Manager, Yexian Ruixin Planting Rural Cooperative "Our drying machines are working 24 hours a day. But more than 6.7 square kilometers-worth of wheat is waiting in a queue to be dried. The local government helped us solve the problem of fuel."
Henan's provincial government has allocated 200 million yuan, or more than 28 million U.S. dollars, to help farmers dry wheat. It will also help speed up the wheat harvest by facilitating transport of harvesters and grain dryers to farms in areas affected by heavy rainfall. Insurance companies and the banks are working to compensate farmers who've lost crops.
XIE YINGXIN Professor, Henan Agricultural University "As wheat experts, our job in the future is to develop better wheat varieties that can resist the lodging, bad weather and are hard to sprout."
Henan produces around a quarter of China's wheat. Farmers in the north of the province, as well as Shandong and Hebei are relieved to have less affected by the wet weather. Experts expect the crop losses caused by rain damage will be localised and wheat prices will go up again.
XIA RUIXUE Nanyang, Henan Province "China views food security with great importance as it's about ensuring a sustainable food supply in a country with a population of around 1.4 billion. So, it will go all out to ensure the summer harvest of the wheat. Xia Ruixue, CGTN, Nanyang, Henan Province."
News originally posted on CGTN:https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-06-02/VHJhbnNjcmlwdDcyNjky/index.html
