Drought
The Ministry of Water Resources said on Thursday that more than 500,000 hectares of arable land had been affected by the drought, leaving 330,000 people in rural areas without a sufficient supply of potable water.
Since October, rainfall in regions south of the Yangtze River had been 50 to 80 per cent lower than normal, it said.
About 2.4 million people in the provinces of Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian had already been affected by the drought, and concerns were growing in Guangxi, Hunan and Yunnan, the ministry said.
In Taizhou, Zhejiang, the residents of Sanmen county are dealing with their worst drought in 50 years, according to a report by state broadcaster CCTV.

National Guard troops respond in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Laura was Earth’s most expensive tropical cyclone of 2020, with $18.2 billion in damage.
The combined economic losses (insured and uninsured) from all 416 weather and earthquake disasters cataloged by Aon in 2020 was $268 billion (2020 USD). Most of the 2020 total, by far, came from weather-related disasters ($258 billion), 29% above the 2001-2020 inflation-adjusted average. Those numbers make 2020 the fifth costliest year on record for weather-related disasters.
The year was the most expensive ever for severe weather (including severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hail), with $63 billion in damage (previous record: $53 billion in 2011). More than 80% of the severe weather damage occurred in the U.S. in 2020, including the costliest severe weather outbreak in world history, according to Aon: an August 2020 event that featured a violent derecho in the U.S. midwest that caused $11 billion of the $12.6 billion in damage of the outbreak, the balance caused by tornadoes, hail, and other severe thunderstorms.
Insured damage from wildfires in 2020 was $12 billion - the third highest on record, behind only 2017 and 2018. The year 2020 marked the third time in the past four years that global insured losses from wildfires exceeded $10 billion - a threshold never crossed prior to 2017. Remarkably, wildfire has caused more than $70 billion in insured losses since 2000, 75% of that in the past five years alone.
Comment: It is becoming more apparent that erratic seasons, extreme weather patterns and natural disasters are increasing, which is not a consequence of "human-caused climate change" (formerly known as man-made 'global warming') as parroted relentlessly by the MSM, but part of a natural cycle.
See also:
- Bill Gates wants to 'cover the sun' to help counter global warming
- Spain breaks coldest temperature record AGAIN at -35.8C, just a day after new one set
- Volcanoes, Earthquakes And The 3,600 Year Comet Cycle
- Global temp plunges 0.26C in a month: "The next ice age has just started"
- Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Pierre Lescaudron
- Global cooling to replace warming trend that started 4,000 years ago - Chinese scientists
- Professor Valentina Zharkova explains and confirms why a "Super" Grand Solar Minimum is upon us
Comment: As well as natural disasters devastating crop growth, the insane response to the coronavirus crisis and losing value of currency in Western nations in particular, have made the production, availability, purchasing and distribution of food - a MAJOR global issue the likes of which we haven't seen in generations.
See related articles:
- The World Economic Forum's 'Great Reset' plan for the food industry
- Bay Area food bank now serves 500K working-poor as demand 'doubles'
- Ice Age Farmer Report: DERECHO - Corn crop catastrophe, grain stores destroyed, food prices
- COVID-19 lockdown = Auto-genocide? Food shortages likely as US farmers dump MOUNTAINS and LAKES of food
- 'Where's the beef?" US government to buy food from farmers, distribute to food banks
- A crisis looming as the global food supply chains begin to erode
- U.S. food lines are now measured in miles as desperation sets in all over the country
- Global insanity: Farmers destroy crops as number of people using food banks quadruple
Comment: See also:
- Extreme weather & disease: The fight to save Europe's olive trees
- Extreme weather to cut French wine output by 12% this year
- Erratic seasons and extreme weather devastating crops around the world
- COVID-19 lockdown = Auto-genocide? Food shortages likely as US farmers dump MOUNTAINS and LAKES of food
- Global insanity: Farmers destroy crops as number of people using food banks quadruple
"The good news is that new technologies are really helping to raise yields, in all types of weather conditions," said study lead author David Lobell, the Gloria and Richard Kushel Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment. "The bad news is that these technologies, which include some specifically designed to withstand drought, are so helpful in good conditions that the cost of bad conditions are rising. So there's no sign yet that they will help reduce the cost of climate change."
Comment: Yield is one thing, quality of product is another. YouTuber Ice Age farmer has reported that numerous farmers are also documenting increasingly poor quality yields that are only good for animal fodder, meaning less product available for consumers. Also bear in mind that what an animal eats will impact the nutritional quality of its meat and, in turn, will lead to a deterioration in the health of the consumer.
Comment: See also:
- Extreme weather & disease: The fight to save Europe's olive trees
- Tomato plants send electrical signals to each other through fungi
- Growing strips of wildflowers in farm fields reduces need for pesticides
- Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Pierre Lescaudron
- MindMatters: The Holy Grail, Comets, Earth Changes and Randall Carlson
- Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?
On wheat farms in the U.S. and Russia, it's a drought that's ruining harvests. The soybean fields of Brazil are bone dry too, touched by little more than the occasional shower. In Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, the problem is the exact opposite. Torrential downpours are causing flooding in rice fields and stands of oil palm trees.
The sudden emergence of these supply strains is a big blow to a global economy that has been struggling to regain its footing after the shock of the Covid-19 lockdowns. As prices soar on everything from sugar to cooking oil, millions of working-class families that had already been forced to scale back food purchases in the pandemic are being thrust deeper into financial distress.
What's more, these increases threaten to push up broader inflation indexes in some countries and could make it harder for central bankers to keep providing monetary stimulus to shore up growth.
The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index, a gauge of nine crop prices, has risen 28% since late April to its highest level in more than four years. Wheat earlier this week was the most expensive since 2014.
"The fundamentals have changed dramatically since May," said Don Roose, president of brokerage U.S. Commodities in Iowa. "The weather is bubbling to the top, and we have demand chugging in a bull market."
Comment: See related articles:
- Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Here's why food prices will double then triple, are you ready?
- Covid-19 is a Trojan Horse for 'The Great Reset': Sky News Report on Klaus Schwab and the Davos Set
- Millions of acres of crops in the central US have been destroyed by a series of historic natural disasters
- Economists forecast trouble: Rising food prices globally mean it's more and more expensive to eat
- Global insanity: Farmers destroy crops as number of people using food banks quadruple

Cracked earth is exposed in the riverbed of the Paraguay River in Chaco-i near Asuncion city, Paraguay, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020.
The Paraguay River has reached its lowest level in half a century after months of extreme drought in the region, exposing the vulnerability of landlocked Paraguay's economy.
Some 85% percent of Paraguay's foreign trade is conducted via the river, which has been depleted because of a lack of rainfall in the Pantanal area of Mato Grosso state in Brazil. The river flows from that area and also runs through Bolivia and Argentina.
The fall in the water level has slowed down cargo vessel traffic on the Paraguay River, causing significant cost overruns for the transport of fuel, fertilizer, food and other imported goods. The crisis has also exposed the precariousness of Paraguay's access to drinking water.
"We have never had a situation as serious as the one we are experiencing now. We are approaching the end of the year, a time when more products must enter," Nery Giménez, president of the Paraguayan Importers Center, told The Associated Press.
Comment: Waterspout outbreak over the Great Lakes sets world record of 232 for a 7 day period
As well as natural disasters devastating crop growth, the insane response to the coronavirus crisis and losing value of currency in Western nations in particular, have made the production, availability, purchasing and distribution of food - a MAJOR global issue the likes of which we haven't seen in generations.
See related articles:
- Ice Age Farmer Report: DERECHO - Corn crop catastrophe, grain stores destroyed, food prices
- COVID-19 lockdown = Auto-genocide? Food shortages likely as US farmers dump MOUNTAINS and LAKES of food
- On the outskirts of Paris, the food bank queues grow longer
- 'Where's the beef?" US government to buy food from farmers, distribute to food banks
- A crisis looming as the global food supply chains begin to erode
- U.S. food lines are now measured in miles as desperation sets in all over the country
- Threat of starvation in many countries becoming more real as coronavirus disrupts global food chain
- Global insanity: Farmers destroy crops as number of people using food banks quadruple

Members of Paraguay’s highway patrol and local residents try to extinguish a fire on 27 September in San Bernardino, east of Asuncion, Paraguay.
Devastating wildfires have broken out across across Paraguay, as drought and record high temperatures continue to exacerbate blazes across South America.
A total of 5,231 individual wildfires broke out across the country on 1 October - up 3,000 on the previous day. Most of were concentrated in the arid Chaco region in the west of the country, but thick yellow smoke had reached as far as the capital, Asunción.
Paraguay's outbreak came as the southern hemisphere heads into summer and neighbouring countries also face unprecedented wildfires. The Brazilian Amazon is recording its worst blazes in a decade, with numbers up 61% on the widely reported fires of last year, and separate fires in the southern Pantanal region.

Landfalling droughts, which form over the ocean and then migrate onto land, can cause larger, drier conditions than droughts that occur solely over the land.
Stanford scientists have now shown that may be possible in some instances — the researchers have identified a new kind of "landfalling drought" that can potentially be predicted before it impacts people and ecosystems on land. They found that these droughts, which form over the ocean and then migrate landward, can cause larger and drier conditions than droughts that occur solely over the land. Of all the droughts affecting land areas worldwide from 1981 to 2018, roughly one in six were landfalling droughts, according to the study published Sept. 21 in Water Resources Research.
"We normally don't think about droughts over the ocean — it may even sound counterintuitive. But just as over land, there can be times where large regions in the ocean experience less rainfall than normal," said lead author Julio Herrera-Estrada, a research collaborator with Water in the West who conducted research for the study while he was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). "Finding that some droughts start offshore will hopefully motivate conversations about the benefits of monitoring and forecasting droughts beyond the continents."
Comment: See also:
- Highest flooding in Europe for 500 years, historical records show correlation with abnormal cold
- A warning from ancient tree rings: The Americas are prone to catastrophic, simultaneous droughts
- Professor Valentina Zharkova: "We entered the 'modern' Grand Solar Minimum on June 8, 2020"
- Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?
- MindMatters: The Holy Grail, Comets, Earth Changes and Randall Carlson
- Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Pierre Lescaudron
Comment: Meanwhile other parts of China experienced 21 large-scale floods last year setting historical records.