China Drought Global Food Crisis to Trigger Many More Egypts

Commodities / Food Crisis
Feb 10, 2011 - 06:14 AM

By: Justin_John

The Chinese government has reportedly decided to spend $1 billion to battle the drought plaguing huge areas in the north, as wheat prices continued their climb and the UN warned of serious consequences for the winter harvest.

The drought is the worst in six decades in many areas, and has left a swathe of grain-producing regions reeling from a lack of any significant rainfall in more than three months.

The money will be spent to divert water to affected areas, construct emergency wells and irrigation facilities, and take other measures, the State Council, or the Cabinet, said in a statement on Wednesday after an executive meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao.

The move was included in a 10-measure package to spur grain production and tackle the persisting drought, which poses a grave threat to wheat production.

The worst affected areas are shown below:



Eight major grain-producing provinces, including Shandong, Jiangsu, Henan, Hebei and Shanxi, have been affected. Together they produce more than 80 percent of China’s winter wheat. By Wednesday, a total of 7.8 million hectares of winter wheat had been affected by the drought in the eight provinces, accounting for 42.4 percent of their total wheat-sown area, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The State Council warned the situation could worsen, saying rainfall across northern China for the foreseeable future would remain “persistently below normal levels and major rivers will continue to be generally dryâ€