This is gonna cost C-Cube $2-5M in revenue over the next 2 Qs. Drought in China. Farmers harvest wheat and rice, in June and July. It's their biggest time of the year, to have extra money. If they have a poor harvest, Summer VCD sales will suffer.....................
chinadaily.net
Worsening drought takes toll on nation's harvests
WHILE some of China's Southern provinces are preparing for the coming flood season, the rest of the country is feeling the effects of possibly worse damages to be caused by the present severe drought.
Posing a threat to the summer harvest of winter wheat in the North for months, the drought is now worsening in many parts of the rice-growing areas in the South, an official warned yesterday.
A catastrophic drought is threatening China's harvest this year in spite of the recent rains, which only slightly eased the drought affecting China's winter wheat growing areas in the North, said Zhao Guangfa, deputy director of the Beijing-based State Flood-Control and Drought-Prevention Headquarters.
"Based on this year's abnormal weather conditions -- like the effects of the El Nino phenomenon, the strongest one since the early 1980s -- and the consequent prolonged drought in China since last summer, farmers and local governments must not let up in fighting against the worst drought they may have faced in the last three years," Zhao said.
So far this week, Zhao said, the drought has not only adversely affected more than 2.1 million hectares of crops in North China's key winter growing areas but also postponed the sowing of about 6.7 million hectares of farmland that should be planted this season.
In South China's rice-growing areas, the lack of irrigation water has prevented farmers from planting rice seedlings on more than 1.3 million hectares of paddy fields.
They added that the annual output of rice has accounted for 80 per cent of the total to be produced in Southwest China's provinces, such as Sichuan and Yunnan.
They made it clear that this year's drought is likely to be worse than that of last year, so the crop failures it may cause will also probably be worse.
Although many provinces were experiencing severe drought in 1997, China had a bumper harvest thanks to the considerable amount of water restored in many large and medium reservoirs during the previous flood season, they said.
Unfortunately, "China has no such luck this year, as the drought began since last summer and persisted throughout last autumn, winter and this spring," said one expert who declined to be identified.
The present drought is likely to continue this summer in many areas, he said, partially because of the effects of El Nino, which emerged early last April.
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Date: 05/06/98
Author: Liang Chao
Copyrightc by China Daily |
