Lack of rain in China has globe fretting about wheat
From KEITH BRADSHER. International Herald Tribune. Paris: Feb 14, 2011. pg. 1
The concern is that the country may need for the first time to start importing wheat in large quantities, pushing already soaring prices even higher and creating shortages elsewhere.
It is weather with global breadbasket implications.
Even as senior officials in China exhort local and provincial officials to do everything possible to cope with a severe drought in the country's wheat belt, the government is trying to reassure the broader public that food prices will not rise.
China's national drought control headquarters posted on its Web site Sunday a statement dated Saturday that described drought conditions as "grim" across a wide area of the wheat belt, and called for emergency irrigation efforts.
But agricultural experts say it is simply too early to assess damage to the country's wheat harvest. Much will depend on how much rain and snow falls in the next several weeks on desiccated fields where wheat plants are no more than several centimeters high.
"We are in the winter months now, when it is typically drier anyway, so the seedlings should still be alive," said an expert at Shandong Agricultural University who provided only his family name, Wang. "But if the weather turns warmer and there is still no rain, then we will not be talking about lower agricultural production, but rather zero production, because the seedlings will all be dead."
The worries go beyond China, which has been essentially self-sufficient in grain for decades. The broader concern is that the country, with 1.3 billion mouths to feed, may need for the first time to start importing wheat in large volumes, pushing already soaring prices even higher and creating shortages elsewhere.
Wheat prices in Chicago jumped nearly 2 percent last Tuesday when the United Nations' food agency issued a rare alert that China's wheat crop was in trouble, and prices remain near their highest level since a steep spike in commodity prices in spring 2008.
The prices jumped on the possibility of China's increasing its modest annual imports of wheat, although there has been little sign yet of extra Chinese purchases, said Arun Karur, vice president and head of commodities at Sapient Global Markets, a consulting firm based in Boston.
Light snow and rain fell on north-central areas of China's wheat belt Wednesday and Thursday, partly because meteorologists fired artillery shells and truck- and aircraft-mounted rockets, all loaded with a cloud-seeding chemical, silver iodide.
Because of the recent precipitation, drought control officials said late Thursday, about one-tenth of the drought-stricken area had received adequate moisture for the short term. A light dusting of snow fell Sunday in the northeastern corner of the wheat belt, Shandong Province.
But Chinese and foreign meteorologists also forecast sharply warmer but very dry days through the coming week.
Chen Shuwei, the vice president and chief analyst at Beijing Orient Agribusiness Consultant, a Beijing firm with close links to the Agriculture Ministry, said, "It's still early to know how severe the impact will be."
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao assured the Chinese public in televised remarks late last week that the supply and demand of grain were "basically" in balance and that large stockpiles were available. But he and other senior officials continue to warn local and provincial officials to make every effort to rescue the wheat crop and to suggest that those officials' performance evaluations will be based on whether they succeed or fail in the coming weeks.
Similar warnings on other top-priority issues in the past have led to the dismissal and imprisonment of local officials who fell short of expectations and even to executions on findings of fraud, an endemic problem in China.
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