Extreme weather strikes multiple regions in succession, threatening food security

El Nino continues to “wreak havoc”. Frequent extreme weather events in many places have already begun to affect grain production and sales.

Reporters learned that due to drought or flooding, several major staple crops have been affected to varying degrees in various producing areas. In western Hunan and areas south of central Hunan, large amounts of rice and corn were submerged by floods, with nearly 10,000 hectares of farmland affected in just one county. Grain production in drought-stricken areas is also very severe. For example, in Yongsheng County, Yunnan Province, due to the lack of effective rainfall, spring plowing has been slow, and as of now nearly 100,000 mu of spring sowing has yet to be completed. It is understood that as the drought continues to worsen, the area requiring replanting and the area requiring switching to different crops due to missed seasonal timing have increased sharply.

⟦NL> Among the many agricultural products, wheat has been “hurt” the most severely. Due to weather and disease, the quality of the new season's wheat has dropped significantly compared with previous years, failing to meet the national minimum purchase price quality standard for wheat, and the problem of wheat being too cheap to sell is very prominent.

Xiangzhou District of Xiangyang City is a major wheat-producing area in Hubei. In 2015, the district's wheat planting area was 1.496 million mu, with total output reaching 1.32 billion jin. At the home of Zhang Hongtao, a large grain grower in the district, reporters saw that 90,000 jin of wheat produced from 102 mu of wheat fields was piled under a crude rain shelter. Due to severe moisture, the wheat had begun to develop insects and mold. When turned with a shovel, dust flew up immediately and a moldy smell assailed the nostrils.

Zhang Hongtao said his family's wheat had already been harvested by May 23, but no one had come to purchase it so far. In order to repay the borrowed agricultural input costs, he had no choice but to sell more than 20,000 jin of wheat at 1.07 yuan per jin through connections, and more than 60,000 jin of wheat still remains unsold.

The problem faced by Zhang Hongtao is very common throughout Hubei Province. Zhu Jingzhou, a large grain grower in the Sanhu Management District of Jiangling County, said that in previous years brokers would snap up grain at 1.12 yuan per jin, but now no one buys even at 1.05 yuan per jin. Wheat is piling up in farmers' homes, while market-support purchase and storage points sit empty waiting.

Reporters saw at several market-support purchase and storage points that although it was the peak grain-selling period, the points were rather deserted. At the Fengqingyuan purchase and storage point in Xiangzhou District, reporters waited for a whole morning and saw no farmers or brokers come to sell grain. Zhang Hongqin, the person in charge of the point, said that in the same period in previous years the point had purchased more than 100,000 tons of wheat, but now it was less than 40,000 tons, and many warehouses were still empty.

Ding Guangzhi, deputy director of the Xiangzhou District Grain Bureau, said that this year wheat prices have remained at a low level, and the current village purchase price offered by grain brokers has fallen to 1.03 to 1.05 yuan per jin. Because the price is too low, large amounts of wheat are hoarded in farmers' hands. A survey showed that as of June 29, grain enterprises in the district had purchased only 35.21% of the wheat purchased in the same period last year, including 0.11 billion jin of market-support wheat, which was 5.86% of the same period last year.

In Henan, another major wheat-producing area, the provincial grain bureau revealed that due to quality declines caused by continuous rainy weather, as of last week, wheat purchased at the minimum purchase price had decreased by nearly 4 billion kg compared with the same period last year, and wheat purchased at market price had also decreased by more than 1.5 billion kg compared with the same period last year, while the average purchase price had also declined somewhat compared with last year.