Droughts in NE China hit soybean, maize

China’s northeastern provinces suffered largescale droughts this summer, which affected maize and soybean production, domestic media reported on Tuesday.

This year’s unusually high temperatures in Northeast China’s Liaoning Province resulted in erratic weather patterns, impacting the local agriculture industry. In some parts of Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, heavy rains even caused farmland to become water-logged.

In addition to severe droughts during the spring, further unfavorable weather conditions in northeastern regions after June undoubtedly led to a reduction in maize production, with soybean production also facing significant challenges.

Though the Chinese government has been subsidizing soybean and maize products since the beginning of 2018, and as subsidies for soybean are much higher than that of maize, soybean yields were much lower than other agricultural products.

Also, soy is inconvenient to sell. Therefore, the planting scale for soybean has been slightly declining throughout 2018.

Total soybean planting in the country is expected to reach 115 million mu (7.67 million hectares) this year, a decrease of 2 million mu from 2017, with total soybean output estimated to reach 14.4 million tons, down 1.71 percent from the same period last year.