Wheat crops hit by China's worst winter drought in 60 years

Feb 9, 2011, 8:07 GMT

Beijing - China's worst winter drought in 60 years could reduce its wheat harvest and put further pressure on rising global food prices, reports said Wednesday.

The severe drought has affected more than 6.4 million hectares of crops, or 35 per cent of the total planted area, in eight major wheat-producing provinces in northern, eastern and central China, the Ministry of Agriculture said.

The four-month drought in the eastern province of Shandong is already the worst for some 60 years and could become the worst for 200 years if it continues until the end of this month, local officials said.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) issued a 'special alert' Tuesday, warning that the drought in China was 'potentially a serious problem' that could jeopardize the winter wheat harvest.

'This drought has been putting further pressure on wheat prices, which have been rising rapidly in the last few months,' the FAO said.

China's average retail price of wheat flour rose 16 per cent in the 12 months to January, including an 8-per-cent jump since November.

'Although the current winter drought has so far not affected winter wheat productivity, the situation could become critical if a spring drought follows the winter one or the temperatures in February fall below normal,' the FAO said.

The Ministry of Agriculture was scheduled to hold a national video conference Wednesday to discuss more measures to fight the drought.

The worst-hit province of Shandong has recorded just 12 millimetres of rain since September, down 85 per cent from its average rainfall, the official Xinhua News Agency reported earlier.

The ministry sent teams of experts to the affected regions and urged local officials to make more water available for irrigation.

Shandong, a large province with 100 million people, had set up 4,000 pumping stations and serviced 30,000 wells to supply water to farmers, reports said.

The neighbouring Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, transferred some 70 million cubic metres of water from the Yellow River and was keeping 200 million cubic metres of water in reserve.

About 60 per cent of wheat crops were affected by drought and 440,000 people lacked drinking water in the northern province of Shanxi, the agency said.

'The severe drought has led speculators to expect higher prices on the wheat futures market amid fears that crops may fail and drive up grain prices,' it said.

But the China Daily newspaper said government grain reserves were equivalent to 40 per cent of last year's grain consumption in 2010, which could be 'enough to satisfy domestic demand and avoid a price hike.'

When Premier Wen Jiabao visited drought-hit villages in Shandong last week, he said that controlling grain prices was a key factor in the government's 'most important task' this year of curbing consumer-price inflation.

Food prices rose 7.2 per cent last year despite a 3-per-cent increase in grain output to a record 546.41 million tons.

In a commentary Wednesday, China Daily warned that it would be 'far more difficult' to control inflation if grain production fell this year.

The commentary said China's drought was 'one of the latest extreme weather events that have helped send global food prices to record levels' and should 'remind the international community of the increasing urgency of jointly preventing a worldwide food crisis.'

The FAO last week said a monthly index of global food prices jumped by 3.4 per cent in January and said it expected prices to continue rising for the next few months.

Read more about China Weather

Read more about Farming