Reuters – About 7.4 million acres of Chinese farmland is suffering from drought, state media agency Xinhua reported June 25 after record-high temperatures hit a large part of the country’s north.
About 200,000 people and 760,000 large livestock do not have access to sufficient water as of the last week of June, Xinhua reported, citing China’s Ministry of Water Resources.
Affected areas are mainly in the northwestern region of Inner Mongolia, known for its grasslands that feed sheep and cattle, as well as northern Hebei province and northeastern Liaoning, both important corn and dairy areas.
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Chinese capital Beijing topped 40 degrees Celsius on June 24 for a record third day, as rare high temperatures for June grilled an area the size of California in northern China.
Parts of nearby Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Inner Mongolia and Tianjin either raised or kept their hot weather alert at “red,” the highest in the country’s four-tier warning system.
Southwestern Yunnan, which has already endured months of drought since last year, is also facing water shortages, according to the Xinhua report.
The high temperatures eased June 25, but were expected to return later that same week, possibly rising above 40 C again in Beijing, Tianjin and southern Hebei, the state broadcaster CCTV said June 26.
Parts of eastern Jilin and eastern Liaoning, northeastern corn-growing provinces, were set to see heavy rain in the last week of June, the broadcaster reported.
Meanwhile, many areas in the south of the country received heavy rainfall between June 25-26, including southern Guangdong province, eastern Zhejiang and Shanghai. Those rains caused flooding in 15 rivers, said the Xinhua report.
