BEIJING (Reuters) – About 3 million hectares of farmland in China are suffering from drought, state media reported on Sunday, after record high temperatures hit a large part of the country’s north since last week.
About 200,000 people and 760,000 large livestock do not have access to sufficient water, Xinhua reported, citing the Ministry of Water Resources.
The affected areas are mainly the northwestern region of Inner Mongolia, known for its grasslands that feed sheep and cattle, as well as northern Hebei province and northeastern Liaoning, both important corn and dairy farming areas.
Chinese capital Beijing topped 40 degrees Celsius(104F) on Saturday for a record third day, as rare high temperatures for June grilled an area the size of California in northern China.
Parts of nearby Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Inner Mongolia and Tianjin either raised or kept their hot weather alert at “red”, the highest in China’s four-tier warning system.
Southwestern Yunnan, which has already endured months of drought since last year, is also facing water shortages, according to the Xinhua report.
The high temperatures eased on Sunday but are expected to return on Tuesday, possibly even rising above 40 degrees Celsius again in Beijing, Tianjin and southern Hebei, the state broadcaster CCTV said on Monday.
Parts of eastern Jilin and eastern Liaoning, northeastern corn-growing provinces, are set to see heavy rain from Monday, CCTV added.
Meanwhile, many areas in the south of the country received heavy rainfall over the weekend, including southern Guangdong province, eastern Zhejiang and Shanghai, causing flooding in 15 rivers, said the Xinhua report.
(Reporting by Dominique Patton; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
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