China races against extreme weather for wheat harvest

China is racing against extreme weather including hail, heavy rain and strong winds to harvest wheat.

 

As of Tuesday (Jun 9), China has reaped 57.3 percent or nearly 13.3 million hectares of its wheat harvest, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

 

The ministry said on its website on Wednesday (Jun 10) that heavy rains hit central and eastern parts of China between Sunday and Tuesday resulting in the delay of the wheat harvesting.

 

In order to battle the delay, major wheat producers in Henan, Shandong and Hebei Provinces were summoning harvesters, sending weather messages to the farmers' mobile phones and firing chemical-laden shells into the clouds to reduce the effects of extreme weather.

 

Storms claimed at least 60 lives in different parts of China since the beginning of this month as the country entered its main flood season which ends in August.

 

The National Meteorological Centre warned of extreme weather conditions including typhoons, heavy rains, high temperatures and drought for this year which could cause severe damages.

 

In Pingshan County, Hebei Province, wheat and corn planted on more than 2,000 hectares were destroyed by a hailstorm on Monday (Jun 8) and crops on another 3,200 hectares were damaged.

 

Meanwhile, local authorities in Shandong Province fired 1,084 shells and 58 rockets with chemicals into the clouds last week to make them rain instead of forming hail.

 

Shandong's officials also summoned back 21,000 harvesting machines that went to work in other provinces and hired another 5,500 machines from neighbouring areas to hasten the harvest. There were a total of 53,747 combines working on Shandong's farms Tuesday afternoon, the provincial agricultural department reported.

 

Elsewhere in Henan, the country's largest wheat producing region, 81.5 percent of the summer wheat had been gathered as of Tuesday.

 

According to Wang Dianrang, agricultural chief of Huaxian County, Henan, the rain-delayed harvest had led to a rise in harvesting costs, which almost doubled.

 

In Shangqiu and Kaifeng of Henan, local governments sent officials and militia to harvest fallen wheat that could not be reached by machines.

 

Amidst of all the negative news, the Central Meteorological Observatory provided a glimmer of hope by indicating that the weather will be fine between Wednesday and Sunday in most wheat growing areas.

 

China produced 528.5 million tonnes of grain last year, which was the country's fifth consecutive bumper harvest. Henan alone harvested 30.6 million tonnes of wheat last year, breaking its own summer grain harvest record five years in a row.

 

Despite the impacts of extreme weather conditions, China is still expecting a bumper grain harvest this summer.