Recent concerns about a drought afflicting China’s wheat-growing region and the threat to the supply of wheat available to Chinese people has abated with rain and snow finally arriving in the last two weeks.
The New York Times reported that after 50 days without rain in China’s northern wheat-growing region, precipitation arrived to meet budding wheat plants, which would have died without water. The Chinese government, which had been carefully monitoring the situation, was also able to divert resources for emergency irrigation. All told, nearly two-thirds of the wheat growing region has been restored.
With the Chinese government policy of self-sufficiency in food supply maintained for now, fears of increased Chinese imports of wheat, and therefore a likely increase in wheat prices globally, have also been calmed.
Posted by Michael Lucivero.
