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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/08/econo...hnk/index.html
'Everything is gone.' Flooding in China ruins farmers and risks rising food prices
By Laura He, CNN Business
Updated 8:04 PM ET, Sat August 8, 2020
By this time of year, the rice growing on Bao Wentao's family farm should have been ready to harvest.
Instead, heavy flooding has engulfed huge swathes of southern China, including more than 36 acres of rice fields that 19-year-old Bao and his father tend to in their village near Poyang Lake.
"The crops have completely failed," Bao told CNN Business in an interview over the social media app WeChat, adding that his family has already lost roughly 200,000 yuan ($28,000) worth of produce. "The rice was nearly ripened and ready to harvest before the flooding. But now everything is gone."
Surging floodwater burst the banks of Poyang Lake in Jiangxi province last month, destroying thousands of acres of farmland in what's known as the "land of fish and rice." The broader Yangtze River basin — which includes Poyang Lake and stretches more than 3,900 miles from Shanghai in the east to the Tibetan border in the west — accounts for 70% of the country's rice production.
For farmers like Bao and his father, the damage has been devastating. Not only did the rainfall ruin crops they were about to collect, but the scale of the flooding has made it impossible to salvage anything from this year.
"The land is still under water," Bao said. "That means we are not going to have any harvest for the entire year."
The flooding that walloped Bao's farm and 13 million more acres of cropland — about the size of West Virginia — is the worst that that China has experienced in years. China's Ministry of Emergency Management pegs the direct economic cost of the disaster at $21 billion in destroyed farmland, roads and other property. Some 55 million people, including farmers like Bao, have been affected.
The disaster is bad news for the world's second-largest economy, which is already in a fragile state because of the coronavirus pandemic. Beijing has so far been able to secure food supplies by importing vast amounts of produce from other countries, and by releasing tens of millions of tons from strategic reserves.
But analysts warn that such measures can only be useful for so long...
'Everything is gone.' Flooding in China ruins farmers and risks rising food prices
By Laura He, CNN Business
Updated 8:04 PM ET, Sat August 8, 2020
By this time of year, the rice growing on Bao Wentao's family farm should have been ready to harvest.
Instead, heavy flooding has engulfed huge swathes of southern China, including more than 36 acres of rice fields that 19-year-old Bao and his father tend to in their village near Poyang Lake.
"The crops have completely failed," Bao told CNN Business in an interview over the social media app WeChat, adding that his family has already lost roughly 200,000 yuan ($28,000) worth of produce. "The rice was nearly ripened and ready to harvest before the flooding. But now everything is gone."
Surging floodwater burst the banks of Poyang Lake in Jiangxi province last month, destroying thousands of acres of farmland in what's known as the "land of fish and rice." The broader Yangtze River basin — which includes Poyang Lake and stretches more than 3,900 miles from Shanghai in the east to the Tibetan border in the west — accounts for 70% of the country's rice production.
For farmers like Bao and his father, the damage has been devastating. Not only did the rainfall ruin crops they were about to collect, but the scale of the flooding has made it impossible to salvage anything from this year.
"The land is still under water," Bao said. "That means we are not going to have any harvest for the entire year."
The flooding that walloped Bao's farm and 13 million more acres of cropland — about the size of West Virginia — is the worst that that China has experienced in years. China's Ministry of Emergency Management pegs the direct economic cost of the disaster at $21 billion in destroyed farmland, roads and other property. Some 55 million people, including farmers like Bao, have been affected.
The disaster is bad news for the world's second-largest economy, which is already in a fragile state because of the coronavirus pandemic. Beijing has so far been able to secure food supplies by importing vast amounts of produce from other countries, and by releasing tens of millions of tons from strategic reserves.
But analysts warn that such measures can only be useful for so long...
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