Northeast China faces challenges from intensified floods, strengthens disaster relief efforts

Multiple regions in Northeast China have raised the level of emergency response to flooding and issued meteorological warnings as some areas are facing challenges caused by intensified floods that have endangered people’s lives, homes, as well as farmland. Known as the country’s “grain barn,” Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province on Monday released a disaster relief plan for flood-hit agricultural production.

Heilongjiang

In Heilongjiang Province, 12 rivers have exceeded warning level, and 26 reservoirs are operating over the limit by 0.03 to 1.95 meters, Heilongjiang authorities said on Monday. Songhua River in Northeast China saw its first flood of the year on Monday, with water levels at the Jiamusi monitoring station reaching 79.30 meters at 8 pm and continuing rising, the Ministry of Water Resources said on Monday.

Some villages along the river in Wuchang, a city famous for its rice, have flooded, as well as experienced large-scale waterlogging. 

Grain Output

Heilongjiang, which accounted for 11.3 percent of the country’s total grain output in 2022, vowed to ensure agricultural production targets through a disaster relief plan, in which it called for multiple measures, including speeding up field drainage to minimize the time of waterlogging, strengthening control of pests and diseases and farmland management and scientific prevention.

Agricultural Production

“In disaster-affected areas, agricultural production has definitely been affected, but how much damage has been done depends on the crop,” Li Guoxiang, a researcher at the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Monday. Li said that for instance, if waterlogging can be eased to a short term in rice farms, there will still be an opportunity for production to recover.

So far, flooding has been regional so it’s still too early to judge the entire situation across the country, as agriculture production in most of the country has not been significantly affected, according to Li.

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