Extreme weather in China is a harbinger of challenges to come
The central province of Henan faces the opposite problem. There it was the rain that came early, causing floods and drowning fields. The region produces a quarter of China’s wheat. But much of it is now unfit for human consumption.
Officials in Beijing are obsessed with food security. Many Chinese are old enough to remember the famine caused by Mao Zedong’s policies in the late 1950s. That catastrophe killed tens of millions of people. Today the legitimacy of the Communist Party rests in part on its ability to provide affordable food to the people, who are eating an increasingly rich diet. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has therefore pushed for more self-sufficiency in the food supply.
The geography of Chinese farming is likely to change in ways that cannot be fully foreseen. Our maps show how the maximum yields of wheat, maize and rice might be affected in a high-emissions scenario. If, as expected, northern China grows warmer, it would make sense to move more grain cultivation there.
With cows, it is harder. But many now spend their days in sheds being cooled down. At a farm in the northern province of Hebei, cows are periodically doused with water and blasted with air from giant fans hung from the roof. Each cow’s location is monitored by a computer and the sprays automatically adjusted to avoid waste. Such practices have spread rapidly through the dairy industry, says James Su, whose company supplies the cooling equipment.
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