Extreme flooding and heat in China destroy farms and kill animals

The downpour began in late May and drenched wheat crops in central China. When the wheat grains turned black in the rain and became unfit for human consumption, the government mobilized emergency teams to save as much of the harvest as possible. In a viral videoa 79-year-old farmer in Henan province wiped away tears as he surveyed the damage.

The unusually heavy rainfall, which local officials said was the cause worst failure of the wheat crop in a decade, underscored the risks posed by climate shock to President Xi Jinping’s push to make China more self-reliant in its food supply.

Ensuring China’s ability to feed 1.4 billion people is an important part of Mr. Xi to lead the country to superpower status. In recent years, tensions with the United States, the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine have all led to more volatility in global food prices, increasing the urgency for China to grow more of its own crops.

The country has not experienced food price inflation at the level of other major economies, but officials are concerned about the vulnerability of the food supply to global shocks. Last summer, prices for pork, vegetables and fruits in China spiked, prompting the government release pork from its strategic reserves to stabilize prices. Thereafter, Chinese leaders reiterated their call to prioritize food security.

In recent weeks, extreme heat has killed fish in rice paddies in southern China’s Guangxi province and thousands of pigs on a farm in the eastern city of Nantong, according to local news reports. The fire department in the northeastern city of Tianjin was called to spray water on pigs that suffered heat stroke while riding in a truck. Officials have warned of extreme heat and flooding damaging wheat crops in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

In a country where famines have destabilized dynasties throughout history, the ruling Communist Party is also aware that meeting basic needs is a precondition for political stability.

Last year, food shortages became a powerful source of concern after the government imposed a draconian lockdown on Shanghai, a city of 25 million, to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Online videos showed residents fighting on the streets and in supermarkets for food. In the nationwide protests that followed against China’s “zero Covid” policy, protesters chanted, “We want food, not Covid tests.”

China’s farmland is already shrinking as rapid urbanization has polluted large areas of the country’s soil and governments have sold rural land to developers. The distribution of water between northern and southern China is uneven, making some agricultural areas vulnerable to drought and others to flooding. The war in Ukraine has threatened China’s access to wheat and fertilizers. And a trade war with the United States that started in 2018 has made it more expensive for China to buy soybeans and other foods from America.

Mr Xi has portrayed food self-sufficiency as a matter of national security, often saying, “Chinese people should hold their rice bowls firmly in their own hands.” He has set as a “red line” that the country should preserve 120 million hectares of farmland and has declared war on food waste, especially in restaurants. The Chinese government often points out that it has to feed one-fifth of the world’s population on less than 10 percent of the world’s acreage.

To create a more stable food supply, China has stockpiled crops and bought more farmland abroad. It has evolved heat-resistant ricesgenetically modified soybeans and new seed technologies, an effort that has led to allegations of intellectual property theft from the United States.

A front-page article in the People’s Daily on Monday stated that Mr. Xi had a “special affection” for farmers and prioritized increasing their income. Last month, he visited a wheat field in northern China’s Hebei province where farmers were trying to boost grain production by growing wheat varieties that could withstand drought.

In a state-produced video of Mr. Xi showed local officials the breads and noodles that can be made with the new wheat varieties. “President Xi hopes we can live a happier life,” says a local farmer said in the video, “and we will work harder to achieve that goal.”

But weather-related shocks to the food supply are a much more unpredictable challenge.

“You can impose more rules to discourage local governments from selling farmland. You can subsidize farmers,” says Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a fellow for international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US-based research institute. “But when extreme weather events occur, it not only causes damage, but is also very expensive to repair.”

This month, record rainfall flooded the city Beihai in South China. And parts of China, including major cities like Shanghai and Beijing, have already experienced unusually early heat waves this year, with temperatures this month exceeding 106 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas.

But the most recent food security fears arose from the floods in Henan province and surrounding regions in central China, which produce more than three-quarters of the country’s wheat.

“During the harvest season, wheat farmers are most afraid of prolonged rains,” said Zhang Hongzhou, a research fellow who studies China’s food strategy at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “This is happening at the worst time.”

The rains came just as farmers were preparing to start this year’s harvest, causing some of the wheat to sprout. This lower quality wheat is not suitable for processing into flour and is usually sold at a lower price as animal feed.

The extent of damage to this year’s crop is still unclear. Lower wheat yields could force China to import more wheat this year and raise global grain prices, analysts said.

China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of wheat. Demand has increased along with incomes as people in cities buy more Western breads and desserts. Rising meat consumption in China also means more wheat is needed, which is used for animal feed.

Following the rainfall in Henan, the Chinese government authorized 200 million yuan, or about $28 million, in emergency aid to help dry the wet grains and drain the sodden fields. Rural civil servants setting up a 24-hour hotline for farmers and urged local governments to find business buyers for damaged wheat that is still edible.

State media have said the government’s efforts have minimized losses to farmers, with a front-page article in a recent People’s Daily newspaper announcing the harvest’s progress. CCTV, the state broadcaster, broadcast a 15-minute video clip in which government officials warned farmers to harvest early.

China’s fixation on food security has global implications, largely because it maintains vast food reserves, including what the US Department of Agriculture estimates to be about half of the world’s wheat reserves. Last year, US officials accused China of hoarding food supplies and causing food prices to rise worldwide, especially in poorer countries. China in response blamed the United States for inciting a global food crisis, saying US sanctions against Russia hurt wheat exports to African countries.

Measuring the stability of China’s food supply is difficult because information about the exact quantity and quality of crop supplies is treated as a state secret. While the country’s official data regularly shows record high wheat production, analysts have, for example, done just that interrogated the reliability of the data.

But in January 2022, the government offered a rare glimpse.

In response to Western countries’ accusations that China is hoarding food, a comment published in The Economic Daily, a state-controlled newspaper, revealed that China had enough wheat and rice reserves to feed its people for at least 18 months, which the article said was a reasonable amount of supplies.

“Being prepared for unexpected incidents is a principle of running a nation,” the commentary said.

Zixu Wang contributed research.