On Tuesday, four government departments issued an urgent joint emergency alert, warning that the autumn harvest was under “serious threat”. He urged local authorities to ensure that “every unit of water … is used carefully” and called for methods including cascade irrigation, diversion of new water sources and cloud seeding. A record-breaking heat wave combined with a months-long drought during the usual flood season has wreaked havoc in China’s normally water-rich south. It dried up parts of the Yangtze River and dozens of tributaries, drastically affecting hydropower capacity and causing rolling blackouts and power curtailment as electricity demand peaks. There is now concern about the future food supply. Even Pay, a Trivium China analyst specializing in agriculture, said her immediate concern was fresh produce. “The types of fresh vegetables that supply local markets where people buy their produce every day – this is the category least likely to be in a large irrigated area and unlikely to be strategically prioritized in a national push for protect the grain and the oil is fed,” he said. Crop losses would also hit supply chains and exacerbate supply problems, Pay said, as a Chinese city’s produce was often grown near that city but would have to come from further away and could rot in larger travel. Pay said the concerns were mainly domestic and that the food categories that would affect global markets were “being kept fairly safe”. However, he said attention should be paid to canola if the drought continued when the crops are planted in the fall. China is now relying more on its own corn production – 4% of which was grown in drought-hit Sichuan and Anhui – after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drastically destabilized global supplies. Pay added: “I think we’re going to start seeing reports of farmers getting hit. Many pig farmers have upgraded in recent years… There are large intensive vertical farms, and if the AC is interrupted [the pigs] it’s not going to be in good shape.” Pay was relatively bullish on the measures announced on Tuesday and its call for tailored local solutions. The water diversion order will likely help areas where water is inaccessible, he said, and subsidies have already been announced. “But now we’ve had 35 consecutive days of heat warnings. We have dry season water levels or below typical dry season water levels. The conditions are very, very extreme and there is no doubt there will be some crop loss.” Tuesday’s announcement strongly emphasized that it came from the highest levels of the government, partially titled “Emergency Notice to Fully Implement the Spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Important Directives.” “This is a really important message to localities that there is a very high degree of political will behind the push to do anything and everything possible to support farmers and make sure crops can be saved,” Pay said. Start your day with the top stories from the US, plus the day’s must-reads from across the Guardian Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. It was also a sign of pressure on China’s Communist Party to avoid food price hikes and inflation as it prepares for its five-year meeting in the coming months. “It signals to the markets, to anyone who’s panicking or thinking about getting food, that: hey, everybody’s mobilized and we’re going to do what we can,” Pay said. “It also signals to local governments at the provincial and county level that they need to come out and be seen to do something even if there is nothing that can be done.” China has made climate-crisis commitments to peak coal production before 2030, but – along with some European countries – has recently redefined coal production to prevent a global energy crisis. Pay said China has made great efforts in adaptability. He said the failure of hydropower in Sichuan – where it contributes 80% of the supply – would likely lead to a short-term response based on fossil fuels before efforts to boost other renewables that have struggled to compete with cheap hydropower. “What happens this summer is going to be the key case for what a climate emergency looks like, and we’re likely to see a lot of policy research and redesign … and a lot more attention around water availability.” Additional reporting by Xiaoqian Zhu
