Crop failures, energy shortages as China bakes

JIUJIANG: Teams of drillers are working long hours to build wells to fight a devastating drought sweeping parts of China, farmers in Jiujiang city in the country’s central Jiangxi province told media yesterday.

‘‘These villages, all of them, are particularly dry,’’ said Gao Pucha (42), who led one drilling team in Dashan village in Jiujiang.

‘‘When we got the notice to drill wells, we got up early and worked late, more than 15 hours a day.’’

In another nearby village, a 72yearold man named Chen scoured the fields for ears of rice left over from the paddy harvester to take home and feed to his chickens.

‘‘Sesame, corn, sweet potatoes, cotton in the drylands are all dried up,’’ Chen told media.

China issued a national drought emergency earlier this month as recordhigh temperatures continued to scorch the regions along the Yangtze River.

On Thursday, Jiangxi province raised its drought emergency response from Level III to Level IV, the highest of the country’s fourtier ranking system.

Jiangxi province is one of China’s 13 major grainproducing regions.

The heat has struck the agriculture sector hard and caused a patchwork of factory shutdowns across the country.

In July alone, high temperatures caused direct economic losses to China of 2.73 billion yuan ($NZ545 million), affecting 5.5 million people, according to government data published on Friday. Consequences of global shortages and increased prices seem an inevitability as the extreme weather drags on.

Intense heat has blasted China’s people, factories and fields for more than 70 days.

Lakes and rivers have dried up, crops have died, and factories have been closed. From Sichuan in the southwest to Shanghai in the east, temperatures have been more than 40degC.

Thirty million people in the Sichuan city of Chongqing suffered through a 45degC high on August 18.

Without enough water, hydroelectric plants are shutting down, adding an energy crisis to food and water shortages.

Factories are subsequently being closed to make electricity available for residential use.

Serious global consequences are anticipated for food supplies and prices, especially grains and vegetables.

‘‘There is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable to what is happening in China,’’ weather historian Maximiliano Herrera told New Scientist.

‘‘This combines the most extreme intensity with the most extreme length with an incredibly huge area all at the same time.’’

China’s government was taking ‘‘resolute’’ action to combat the emergency, it said.

It has ordered water to be released from Himalayan reservoirs, and a programme using cloudseeding agents in the hope of increased rainfall is under way. Crops are also being treated with chemicals that aid in water retention.

The agriculture ministry in an emergency notice last week called on farmers to harvest and store rice and take action to strengthen grain growth in coming weeks.

In areas where the drought has already inflicted heavy damage, farmers are encouraged to switch to lateautumn crops such as sweet potatoes, but that is no easy task.

‘‘We can’t switch to other crops because there’s no [viable] land,’’ said Hu Baolin, a 70year old farmer in a village on the outskirts of Nanchang, Jiangxi’s provincial capital.

Heatwaves and drought have hit widely throughout the northern hemisphere this summer, even as unusually wet conditions pepper the global south.

The European Drought Observatory reports 60% of the European Union is officially drought affected, while in the United States 41% of the nation has been judged to be in a state of drought. — Reuters/additional reporting staff reporter.