Measures taken to protect farmers
While the country celebrated the "landmark success" of its grain output of 500 million tons last year, the severe snow in the past weeks has cast a shadow on the harvest this year.
Farmer Zhong Dianqiang of Shaoguan, Guangdong Province, clears ice from his crops earlier this month. Most of the vegetable grown in the region were destroyed as a result of the blizzards.
Will farmers' income in South China substantially shrink after last year's rapid rise? Will the shortage of farming products push prices even higher?
Questions such as these may have vexed Premier Wen Jiabao and Agriculture Minister Sun Zhengcai, who has been crisscrossing Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi and other provinces and regions where crops have been damaged by the severe snow.
Winter storms have heaped woes on central, south and southwest China since mid-January, leading to widespread traffic jams, blackouts and crop losses.
Official figures till Feb 14 show 10.5 million hectares of crops in 20 provinces and autonomous regions, or about 7.5 percent of the country's total plantation acreage, have been affected by the snow disaster.
The blizzards have also killed 4 million pigs, 393,000 cows, 1.38 million sheep and 63 million chickens and ducks in less than a month, causing livestock shortages and price rises, and hurting farmers' incomes.
Nearly half of the total cole produce, or about 3.26 million hectares, was hit by the freak weather, along with 2.81 million hectares of other vegetables, 1.26 million hectares of fruit trees and about 584,000 hectares of wheat.
"If we put the disaster in the context of global farming product supplies, we'll see how urgent and challenging our reconstruction work is in the agricultural sector," said Sun. "We are facing many problems and difficulties."
Sun pointed out that the areas hit by the blizzards are suffering from labor shortages in plantation as most young and capable laborers have migrated to cities.
Huge investment to improve the agricultural infrastructure destroyed by the snow will also worsen the local governments' financial situation, he warned.
The regions are low on supplies of seeds and stud stock and farmers badly need scientific solutions to cushion the disaster's impact, Sun said, adding that his ministry is tackling the crisis on all these fronts.
For example, the ministry has joined forces with China Mobile to send free disaster relief tips via mobile phones to farmers in the affected regions.
The Spring Festival break for the 3,000-odd graduate students of Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences have been extended. They were asked not to return to school but help their relatives in the countryside recover the losses.
