About 11.87 million hectares of crops in China had been damaged
by low temperatures or freezing weather in 20 provinces, most hit
by disastrous winter storms, by Thursday, according to the
monitoring of Chinese Ministry of Agriculture (MOA).
About 5.85 million hectares of crops were affected, and about
1.76 million hectares of crops would expect no yields at all this
year, said the MOA.
Winter storms have plagued the country's south since
mid-January, leading to widespread traffic jams, blackouts and crop
loss.
Cole and other vegetables, oranges and wheat, in particular,
suffered severely from the snow.
Nearly half of the cole, or about 3.26 million hectares, was hit
by the freakish winter weather, as well as 2.81 million hectares of
other vegetables, 1.26 million hectares of fruit trees including
oranges and about 584,000 hectares of wheat, according to latest
statistics from the MOA.
Transport problems in some snow-hit provinces had led to
shortages and price rises of vegetables there, posing new threats
to the country's rising inflation rate.
However, prices of vegetables in disaster-stricken areas had
already begun to fall as the government increased supplies to these
regions.
Statistics revealed that between February 6 and February 12,
170,000 tons of vegetables were shipped to 14 snow-stricken
provinces, including Jiangsu, Hunan, Anhui and Guizhou, to ease a
shortage of fresh produce and price increase pressures.
Vegetable prices in 14 snow-affected provinces in China
monitored by the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) decreased 3.2 percent
on February 12 from the average price before the Spring Festival starting on February 7, and
price fall continued in the following days.
"The price of vegetables will further decrease as the weather is
getting warmer," said Huang Hai, assistant minister of MOC said
Thursday.
In the meantime, the country was still optimistic about this
year's grain output.
The ongoing snowstorm, the worst in five decades in China,
rendered limited effects on grain production, Chen Xiwen, head of
the Office of the Central Leading Group on Rural Work, said
earlier, as most winter grain crops were planted in the north.
China's grain output this year will be stable at around 500
million tons if no major natural disasters happen again, the State
Grain Administration (SGA) said.
(Xinhua News Agency February 17, 2008)
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