 |
|
A woman in Wenquan village, Qionghai city of Hainan province, examines her scorched corn on Tuesday, a casualty of the heat wave that has been baking the province since the start of summer. [China Daily] |
Frequent natural disasters this year may result in loss of '1 to 2 percent'
Beijing: An agricultural expert has warned of a "slight drop" in China's total grain output this year as a result of frequent natural disasters.
Lu Bu, a researcher from the Institute of Agriculture Resources and Regional Planning at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said 1 to 2 percent of grain loss is foreseeable, adding that fortunately, the decrease will be very minimal compared with the total grain yield of the country.
"Sure enough, excessive rain has severely damaged agricultural production in Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian, which were mainly supported by industrial crops, such as vegetables and sugarcane," Lu told China Daily.
"But for China's main crops, the damage is not great since the six provinces and autonomous region hit by rainstorms are not major grain producing regions," he said.
By June 20, a total of 1.3 million hectares of crops had been damaged by heavy rains in five provinces, including Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, according to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture.
