Rare drought to continue, threatens summer harvest

(Xinhua/China Daily)
Updated: 2009-02-07 15:25

The worst drought in half a century in northern China will continue until next month, according to the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) on Friday.

Two children look for shells on a dried riverbed in Zhengzhou, Henan province, February 5, 2009. Accounting for a quarter of China's wheat output, the province is plagued by the most severe drought since 1951. [China Daily]

The administration predicted that drought in some of the hard-stricken regions would be eased slightly by light rainfall over the next ten days.

In March, rainfall in most parts of the wheat-growing areas in northern China is expected to be slightly less or close to normal.

However, the wheat crops in Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, Henan and Anhui will continue to suffer, said Xiao Ziniu, director of the National Climate Center (NCC) under the CMA said at a video conference.

China has raised its drought emergency alert level Thursday from orange to red, the highest level, for the first time in response to the rare drought which began in November.

The dry spell has affected about 161 million mu (10.73 million hectares) of crops, with 4.37 million people and 2.1 million heads of livestock facing water shortage by February 6, according to the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have ordered all-out efforts to combat the drought in the country's vast wheat-growing area to ensure a good summer harvest.

The central government has added 300 million yuan ($44 million) to 100 million yuan of emergency funding to help ease the drought. Since December, more than 5.26 million people have participated in drought-relief work.

About half of the total, or five million hectares of the affected crop fields have been irrigated in the nation's eight wheat-growing provinces as of February 5, according to data released by the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) on Friday.

The ministry said it would offer farmers subsidies on irrigation equipment purchase to aid the relief work. Prices of the facilities should not be higher than the market price for last year.

However, meteorological agencies warned farmers to irrigate their fields in a "scientific way" to prevent their wheat freezing in the early spring.

As the drought will not be relieved in the short-run, more seedlings are likely to be killed as spring approaches, which could threatened the summer harvest.

MOA data showed more than 2.3 million mu of wheat seedlings in Henan, Anhui and Shandong provinces had perished.

This year's summer harvest became more unpredictable as Puccinia striiformis, or stripe rust, one of the most damaging wheat disease began to show signs of spreading across the nation, MOA warned.

The dangerous disease, which could cause losses up to 40 percent, has affected more than 11.3 million mu (753,000 hectares) of wheat in seven provinces, 4.6 million mu more than the same period last year. The northwestern Gansu and Ningxia saw the worst outbreak in 19 years.