Central China farmers face crop failures in 'withering' drought
The Peninsula
Hudian, China: Farmer Bao Mingchen gestured to a dry pipe where water typically irrigates a patch of crops, the soil now cracked under a drought hitti...
Hudian, China: Farmer Bao Mingchen gestured to a dry pipe where water typically irrigates a patch of crops, the soil now cracked under a drought hitting China's vast agricultural hinterland.
"Everything is dry," he said as he strode along the perimeter of a rice paddy near his home in Hudian, a humble township in the central Chinese province of Henan.
The rice plants still shine a radiant green but Bao, puffing on a cigarette, told AFP that the local farmers are beginning to worry about how much longer they can go without rain.
Recent years have brought a long list of extreme weather events to China, including destructive floods and record-breaking heatwaves that experts say are made more frequent by global climate change.
Even as parts of central China were hit by drought, heavy rains and landslides across the south killed four people and left more than a dozen missing this week.
