BEIJING (Reuters) – China will allocate 432 million yuan ($60 million) in flood relief funds to support agricultural output hit by heavy rainfall in eight provinces including Hebei, the agriculture ministry said on Wednesday.
The fund is for replanting crops in flooded areas and purchasing goods to resume agricultural production, said the notification on the ministry’s website.
Record-breaking rains brought by typhoon Doksuri hit northern China from Saturday, flooding cities and rural areas.
Farmlands in southern Hebei, northern Henan and western Shandong provinces have been waterlogged, the ministry said in a Tuesday post citing Monday monitoring. The scope of waterlogging is expected to expand further in the next ten days.
Some corn crops were deeply submerged, with only the tops of the plants showing above the water, clips on the Chinese video social media platform Kuaishou showed on Wednesday. The clips carried a location tag of the southern Hebei city of Baoding.
In another post on Tuesday the ministry warned about outbreaks of pests and crop diseases after the rain brought by the typhoon, which could affect rice, corn and soybeans in southern and northern China.
“Agricultural disaster prevention and mitigation are still facing great challenges, as weather conditions are expected to be unfavourable in the future,” said the agriculture ministry at a Wednesday meeting on flood and disaster relief.
($1 = 7.1828 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Additional reporting by Ningwei Qin and Andrew Hayley; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Jan Harvey)
