In India and China, farmers fret as drought and heat threaten rice harvest
- Drought in China, low rainfall in India and massive monsoon floods in Pakistan are threatening global supplies of the grain
- China, the world’s largest rice producer and importer, is largely self-sufficient. But drought may affect the coming harvest
In June, when Mahendra Pratap began planting his rice paddy fields in Kannauj, a district of India’s Uttar Pradesh state, he was hoping for a good harvest.
The year before torrential rain had destroyed his crops and he did not receive any help from the government.
But during the recent monsoon season, he encountered just the opposite problem: too little rain. By August, 90 per cent of his crop had wilted.
“This year the land is barren and again we did not get help from the government,” Pratap said in a phone interview, adding other farmers have been hit by the same problem.
Extreme weather across the world’s major rice producing countries including India, China and Pakistan is threatening global output of the grain this year, possibly affecting more than 2 billion people in Asia that depend on it as a staple food, experts say.
Due to the drought, China’s rice yields will be affected, and thus may affect the export capacity
