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It started to rain in late May, drenching wheat crops in central China. With grains of wheat blackening in the rain, becoming unfit for human consumption, the government mobilizes emergency teams to save as much of the crop as possible. In a viral video, a 79-year-old farmer in Henan province wiped away his tears as he inspected the damage.
Unusually heavy rains, which local officials said were the worst disruption to the wheat crop in a decade, highlighted the risks posed by climate shocks to President Xi Jinping’s push for China to become more self-reliant in its food supply.
Ensuring that China can feed 1.4 billion people is a key part of Xi’s goal of leading the country to superpower status. In recent years, tensions with the United States, the coronavirus pandemic, and Russia’s war on Ukraine have led to more volatility in global food prices, adding to China’s urgency to grow more of its crops.
The country has not experienced food inflation at levels seen in other major economies, but officials worry about the vulnerability of its food supply to global shocks. Last summer, the prices of pork, fruits and vegetables soared in China, prompting the government to release pork from its strategic reserves in order to stabilize prices. Afterwards, Chinese leaders reiterated their call to prioritize food security.
In recent weeks, extreme temperatures have killed fish in rice paddies in southern China’s Guangxi Province and thousands of pigs at a farm in the eastern Chinese city of Nantong, according to local news reports. The fire department in the northeastern city of Tianjin was called to spray water on pigs suffering from heatstroke while they were riding in a truck. Officials have warned of rising temperatures and floods damaging wheat crops in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
In a country where dynasties have been destabilized by famines throughout history, the ruling Communist Party also understands that meeting basic needs is a prerequisite for political stability.
Last year, food shortages became a powerful source of unrest after the government imposed a heavy lockdown on Shanghai, a city of 25 million people, to control the spread of the coronavirus. Online videos showed residents fighting in the streets and in grocery stores to buy food. In the nationwide protests that followed China’s “zero COVID” policies, protesters shouted, “We want food, not COVID tests.”
Already, China’s farmland is shrinking, as rapid urbanization has polluted large swathes of the country’s soil, and governments have sold rural land to developers. The distribution of water between north and south China is uneven, making some crop-growing areas susceptible to drought and others to floods. The war in Ukraine threatened China’s access to wheat and fertilizer. The trade war with the United States that began in 2018 has made it more expensive for China to buy soybeans and other foods from America.
Xi has portrayed food self-reliance as a matter of national security, often saying, “Chinese people should firmly hold rice bowls in their hands.” He drew a “red line” that the state must preserve 120 million hectares of agricultural land, and declared war on food waste, especially in restaurants. The Chinese government frequently indicates that it has to feed a fifth of the world’s population with less than 10% of the world’s arable land.
To create a more stable food supply, China stockpiled crops and bought more farmland abroad. It has developed heat-resistant rice strains, genetically modified soybeans and new seed technologies, an effort that has drawn accusations of intellectual property theft from the United States.
A front-page article in the People’s Daily on Monday said Xi had “special affection” for farmers and prioritized increasing their incomes. Last month, he visited a wheat field in northern China’s Hebei Province, where farmers were trying to increase grain production by planting wheat varieties that could withstand drought.
In a state-produced video of Xi’s visit, local officials showed off the bread and noodles that can be made with the new wheat varieties. “President Xi hopes that we will live happier lives, and we will work hard to achieve this goal,” a local farmer said in the video.
But weather-related shocks to the food supply are an unpredictable challenge.
You can impose more regulations to prevent local governments from selling farmland. “You can support farmers,” said Zhongyuan Zhue Liu, a fellow for international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US-based think tank. “But when severe weather conditions occur, not only do they cause damage, but they are also very expensive to repair.”
This month, the city of Beihai in southern China was drenched in record rain. Parts of China, including major cities including Shanghai and Beijing, experienced unusually early heatwaves this year, with temperatures this month topping 106 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas.
But the latest food security concerns stemmed from flooding in and surrounding areas of Henan Province in central China, which produces more than three-quarters of the country’s wheat.
“During the harvest season, what wheat farmers fear most is prolonged rains,” said Zhang Hongzhou, a research fellow who studies China’s food strategy at Nanyang Technology University in Singapore. “It happens at the worst of times.”
It rained just as farmers were preparing to start this year’s harvest, causing some of the wheat to germinate. This lower quality wheat is not suitable for processing into flour and is usually sold at a lower price as animal feed.
The extent of the damage to this year’s crop remains unclear. Analysts said that the lower wheat crop may force China to import more wheat this year and push up global grain prices.
China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of wheat. Demand rose as incomes rose as people in the cities bought more Western-style bread and sweets. Rising meat consumption in China has also necessitated more wheat for animal feed.
In response to the rains in Henan, the Chinese government authorized 200 million yuan, or about $28 million, for disaster relief to help dry wet grain and drain soggy fields. Rural officials set up a 24-hour hotline for farmers and urged local governments to find corporate buyers for spoiled wheat that was still edible.
State media said the government’s efforts minimized the losses incurred by farmers, with a recent front-page article in the People’s Daily declaring the progress of the harvest season. State broadcaster CCTV broadcast a 15-minute video showing government officials warning farmers against early harvest.
China’s focus on food security has global implications, in large part because it maintains huge stocks of food, including what the US Department of Agriculture estimates is about half of the world’s wheat reserves. Last year, US officials accused China of stockpiling food and causing a spike in global food prices, particularly in poor countries. In response, China blamed the United States for sparking a global food crisis, saying that US sanctions against Russia were hurting wheat exports to African countries.
It is difficult to gauge the stability of China’s food supply because information on the exact quantity and quality of its crop stocks is treated as a state secret. Although the country’s official data regularly shows a record rise in wheat production, for example, analysts have questioned the reliability of the data.
But in January 2022, the government provided a rare glimpse.
Responding to accusations by Western countries that China was stockpiling food, a commentary published in The Economic Daily, a state-controlled newspaper, revealed that China had enough reserves of wheat and rice to feed its people for at least 18 months, which the article suggested was a reasonable amount of stockpiling. .
The commentary reads, “Being prepared to face unforeseen incidents is a principle of the nation’s governance.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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