China Steps up Anti-Drought Efforts to Stabilize Grain Production

Anchor: China has stepped up its efforts to fight the severe drought in wheat growing regions in order to stabilize grain production.

Both central and local authorities are arranging immediate irrigation and artificial rainfall to alleviate the impact of the bad weather.

Chen Zhe has the details.

For more than three months, northern China has received little precipitation, triggering a widespread drought and threatening wheat crops. The worst affected regions are eight key wheat producing provinces including Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi and Hebei.

The situation has prompted the government to adopt emergency plans to fight the drought and stabilize grain output.

Zhang Xu is an official with the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Office.

"We have devised anti-drought plans based on the assumption that there is no substantial precipitation until the end of this month. We've also drafted detailed water diversion schemes so as to irrigate all the drought-ravaged wheat at least once."

Meanwhile, the State Council, China's cabinet, has promised to spend about 7 billion yuan or one billion US dollars to address the drought. It says the money will be used to help divert water to affected areas, construct emergency wells and irrigation facilities.

On the local level, Shandong Province has arranged for two airplanes to create artificial rainfall to combat the drought.

Zhao Jian is from the Provincial Meteorological Bureau.

"Although the cloud is not very heavy, we still grasp this precious opportunity to increase precipitation to alleviate the drought."

At least two million hectares of wheat field are suffering from the drought in Shandong, which authorities say is the worst in more than a century.

On a national level, the current drought has plagued nearly 8 million hectares of wheat, which account for more than 40 percent of the wheat-sown area in the eight drought-hit provinces.

The State Council has decided to pay farmers higher prices for their produce to offset damage to their yield in drought areas. It warns that the drought could worsen as rainfall across northern China will remain below normal levels in the foreseeable future.

Slight rain or snow has just visited the drought-hit regions, such as Henan and Shanxi. The National Meteorological Center predicts that the rainfall will last until the weekend, but it will not significantly alleviate the persistent drought.

For CRI, I'm Chen Zhe.