RSSCatholics in Hebei province, northern China, have been busy irrigating their farms as the Year of the Ox began with an unusual winter drought threatening to destroy their crops.
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| Lack of water has ruined this year’s harvest in Xiaochang´an village of Hebei province in China. |
Xiaochang´an villagers say the drought is “very serious” and their wheat fields now look “sparse and desolate.” The village lies near the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang. Xiaochang´an parish, part of Zhengding diocese, has 1,800 Catholics.
The Lunar New Year, Jan. 26 this year, usually comes during an off-period for farming, but this year farmers are trying to save their winter crops. In order to conserve the little water available, some villagers have been using plastic pipes, which waste less than the normal irrigation tools.
The drought has affected the entire province and is considered the most serious in 50 years. According to a Feb. 4 report of Hebei Daily, rainfall in the province since last October has been only 10 percent of what it was a year earlier.
Government statistics say nearly 20 million hectares of farmland nationwide have been hit, affecting the winter wheat crops in Anhui, Gansu, Hebei, Henan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces. Also, 4.42 million people and 2.22 million livestock face a shortage of drinking water.
Xiaochang´an villagers said the village committee has dug a 260-meter-deep well and laid water pipes to relieve the water shortage, which has affected more than 4,000 villagers.
Wheat sown last October in fields that were not irrigated before winter is either withered or dead, and the soil in the fields is parched and cracked, they said.
“It was a surprise to all that there was no snow throughout the winter months,” said Joseph Zhang, who adding that he regrets not irrigating his crops before the Lunar New Year. Now, the poor farmer has to race to save as much wheat as possible, he lamented.
Another Catholic villager, Mary Li, said she did not water her crops before the Lunar New Year as she was busy trading in the village markets. Now that she sees how withered her crops are, she feels “very sad.”
“The harvests in May and June certainly will be affected,” she said. “May God bless us so that we won´t need to spend money buying crops for our own consumption.”
Li pointed out that in years of good harvests, villagers are able to live off their crops and even have extra to sell.
A priest in Anhui, south of Hebei, estimated that half of the wheat in his area has withered. He said that the central government has announced compensation of 30 yuan (US$4.39) for each mu (0.06 hectares) of land.
The central government announced on Feb. 5 that it would earmark 300 million yuan in emergency relief funds for local governments, in addition to 100 million yuan previously allocated, according to a China Daily report on Feb. 7.
In an effort to alleviate the situation, some local governments have resorted to cloud-seeding to try and induce rain.
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