China Faces Worst Crop Conditions Ever Due to Climate Change
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-23/climate-change-threatens-china-s-crop-yield-food-security“China faces big difficulties in food production because of the unusual floods last autumn,” he told reporters. “Many faming experts and technicians told us that crop conditions this year could be the worst in history.”
...
Climate change hurts China’s pursuit of food security in two ways, according to Zhang Zhaoxin, a researcher with the agricultural ministry. More frequent extreme weather events are already lowering crop yields. Meanwhile, increasingly unpredictable seasons can undermine farmers’ confidence and potentially worsen the sector’s existing labor shortage.
Farmers in northern China are used to droughts, not floods, Zhang said. In many of the regions that were affected by torrential rain last year, farmers couldn’t harvest their corn because their machinery couldn’t handle the water. There wasn’t enough infrastructure such as pipes and systems to drain the field in time.
Those issues are set to get more serious as the planet warms. Seasonal droughts will reduce yields of China’s three major staple foods — rice, wheat and corn — by 8% by the end of the decade, according to World Resources Institute. In the longer term, climate change also means rising coastal waters along the long and low eastern coast could further stress the agricultural industry.