Chinese farmers face increasingly frequent extreme weather events

Droughts, floods… The last few months have been particularly trying for the nerves of farmers in Henan province, the “breadbasket of China”, who fear the multiplication of these effects of the climate crisis.

It’s been a particularly painful summer for Chinese farmers, who are facing a paradox: extreme droughts followed by devastating floods. The world’s biggest polluter is paying the price for climate change, with direct effects on its agriculture, particularly in the plains of Henan province, nicknamed the “breadbasket of China.”

Here, for hundreds of kilometers, the view is uniform: fields as far as the eye can see, around the city of Nanyang. In the south of this province of center-east of the country, on produces wheat, corn, peanuts and beans. But this year, after the terrible floods in July, the harvest is almost zero. This farmer welcomes us into her small one-hectare farm: “Over there is a peanut field. Normally, you pick up loads of them, more than 20 for each plant. There, there are very few. And, look, they are thin and very small. Although peanuts are known to be water resistant, the yield is very low. In some fields, there is not even a harvest.” she emphasizes.

Never before had so much rain fallen on the region: three days and three nights of violent precipitation drowned the entire plain, the peanut fields, but also the corn fields.

“The rainwater was so deep in the fields that it took ten days for everything to be absorbed. And then we couldn’t replant anything…”

A Chinese farmer

to franceinfo

And yet, the rain was something that farmers were eagerly awaiting: just a month before the flood, the region was facing an unprecedented drought that lasted three months and wiped out the first harvest of the year, wheat. The arrival of the rain therefore raised hopes, but with so much water, wild vegetation has now replaced the plantations, Jingrun explains to us, in front of his destroyed cornfield. “The weeds took over everything, my hands were hurting from pulling them out. I am 60 years old and this year’s flood was the worst in my life. There was so much water that the village chiefs had to come and get us in trucks. They were afraid we would drown.”

All farmers have the same observation: these repeated extreme weather events are starting to seriously weigh on family incomes. Jinmei, in her forties, works corn plots: “For that field over there, I estimate the yield drop is 60% because the corn is not only small but there are not many grains. Normally, that field would earn me 500 euros. But I expect to earn only a little over 120 euros..”

In the neighbouring village, we follow a farmer on his motorbike, with his goats. He wants to show us the extent of the damage in his fields. For him too, the harvest is ruined, but the 63-year-old man remains hopeful. He hopes to soon benefit from new seeds, more resistant to climate change.I am looking forward to a scientific solution that can increase yields despite the floods. I know that the Henan Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences is studying ways to increase wheat yields, they often come to the field to give us advice.” he says.

The fact remains that the worsening climatic conditions also raise concerns for the food supply of China and its 1.4 billion inhabitants, even if for the moment, there is no official alert.We are not worried about a food crisisrelativizes Jinmei, the corn producer. It is true that older people are afraid of running out of food, perhaps because they experienced famine in 1960. But I think that is not the case today, because China is now developed and it is not like before. The country will solve this problem..”

And when you ask these farmers how they explain this change in climate, most of them, fatalistic, say they have no idea. Only a young villager of 20 years old mentions in half-words pollution and the need to better protect the environment to limit all this destructive damage to Chinese agriculture.