China in the midst of record-breaking heat wave, drought
The drought comes alongside a multi-month heatwave – the two elements combining to create the hottest, driest summer in the 61 years the government has recorded such data.
China has seen such severe drought throughout the summer of 2022 that authorities are looking at out-of-the-box options like cloud seeding in an attempt to encourage rainfall and salvage autumn grain crops, according to AP.
The drought comes alongside a multi-month heatwave – the two elements combining to create the hottest, driest summer in the 61 years the government has recorded such data. This has reportedly left the country with dwindling water reservoirs and stilled factories, as many were shut down temporarily to conserve energy for homes as temps soared. Wildfires have also broken out in forests amid these extreme conditions.
While China’s agricultural insurance market is still evolving, it has come quite a way in the last several years. According to the Global Facility for Disaster Relief and Recovery (GFDRR), an acceleration of efforts to create this system began in China around 2004, with their latest agricultural insurance program pilot launching in 2007.
Premium subsidies, GFDRR says, are utilized to create incentives for Chinese farmers to participate in the insurance program, with these subsidies increasing from 76% in 2007 to 79.5% in 2018. Coverage has also been expanded to include harvesters of crops like rapeseed, peanuts, potatoes and bananas. They report that between 2007 and 2018, China’s agricultural insurance market – the second largest in the world as of 2020 – provided a total of $2.4 trillion USD in risk protection and paid $32.12 billion in claims.
China joins a growing list of regions around the world, including areas in Europe, Africa, Asia and the U.S., that are also dealing with intense heat and drought. In the United States, 41.23% of the lower 48 states were considered to be in drought as of August 16, 2022, with approximately 233.5 million acres of crops and over 130 million people affected by these conditions.