Chinese farmers struggle as scorching drought wilts crops

LONGQUAN, China (AP) — Hundreds of persimmon trees that should be loaded with yellow fruit lie wilted in Gan Bingdong's greenhouse in southwestern China, adding to mounting farm losses in a scorching summer that is the country's driest in six decades.

Gan's farm south of the industrial metropolis of Chongqing lost half its vegetable crop in heat as high as 41 degrees Celsius and a drought that has shrunk the giant Yangtze River and wilted crops across central China.

Gan's surviving eggplants are no bigger than strawberries.

A reservoir beside his farm has run dry, forcing him to pump groundwater.

“This year's high temperatures are very annoying,” Gan said.

Drought conditions across a swath of China from the densely populated east across central farming provinces into eastern Tibet have “significantly increased,” the national weather agency said Saturday.

The forecast called for high temperatures and no rain for at least three more days from Jiangsu and Anhui provinces northwest of Shanghai, through Chongqing and Sichuan provinces to the east of Tibet.

Local authorities were ordered to “use all available water sources” to supply households and livestock, the weather agency said.

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