China's extreme weather conditions may lead to food security crisis: Report

Beijing: China's extreme weather conditions may open the gate of the food security crisis, Federico Giuliani wrote in InsideOver.

China's Meteorological Administration had predicted that the deadly El Nino is gripping it in the coming weeks and months will lead to the likely return of floods in the southern region and droughts in the north. In a recent study, the peer-reviewed academic journal Nature Food said that due to China's extreme weather conditions, one-twelfth of China's total rice yield has declined over the last two decades, as per InsideOver.

Italian-based InsideOver, born from Gli Occhi della Guerra, is a website focusing on news insights, international analysis and reporting.

Recently, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that El Nino's effect could remain for eight to 10 months and is likely to gradually strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter that will stretch into next year.

Even, in the last week of May, China's Department of Emergency Management warned that the northeastern and northern parts which are home to some of the country's top grain-producing provinces might experience heavy rain, floods, and hailstorms from June to August. Meanwhile, Yunnan, lying in China's southwestern area, continues to face drought.

Recently, China's National Climate Center (NCC), announced on Sunday, that the country has recorded the highest number of hot days in the past six decades, and that the occurrence of multiple heat waves engulfing the country's northern cities is extremely rare, the Global Times reported.

According to a notice by the NCC, China has recorded an average of 4.1 days this year where the temperature exceeded 35 C, the highest number since records began in 1961, as per The Global Times.

In 2023, China is staring at the same deadly prospect due to El Nino as a report prepared by the National Disaster Reduction Committee Office and ministries of natural resources, water resources, agriculture and rural Affairs and the China Meteorological Administration and State Forestry and Grassland Administration has painted a gloomy picture of the country.

As per this report, while the country's North may face a heightened risk of water-related disasters, the South is likely to face drought. On the other hand, eastern China which is known as a key engine of economic growth, is likely to experience typhoon-triggered disasters.

China was the world's largest importer of wheat in 2022, bringing in an estimated 12 million tonnes of wheat, said the US Department of Agriculture. From January to August 2022, the total rice imports reached 4.56 million tons, up 42.5 per cent year-on-year, said China's General Administration of Customs (GAC). It also imported 20.63 million tons of corn in 2022, as per China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, reported InsideOver.

With China's economy not in good health and several financial institutions from Nomura to UBS and Standard Chartered, Bank of America and JP Morgan cutting their forecast for the country's 2023 GDP growth to 5.1 per cent from 5.5 per cent, the faltering food security situation may further impact the world's second-largest economy hard, say analysts.