Autumn Harvest Survey in Six North China Counties: How to ‘Hold an Umbrella’ Amidst Persistent Rain?
It is not just corn that has suffered; other cash crops have also been hit, leaving those farmers facing potentially even greater financial losses.
This article chronicles the predicaments and struggles of North China’s farmers under this year’s unseasonably prolonged autumn rains. The climate has shifted, and while farmers of every scale strive in countless ways to hold their ground, they still lack an umbrella to shelter them from the risks.
I. Combine Harvesters Unable to Enter the Fields for Emergency Harvesting
For the past two months, he has seen very little sunshine. The autumn rains show no sign of stopping, stretching from September into October. The soil is thoroughly saturated, with standing water from the previous day still lingering in the low-lying patches. Since September, Henan has experienced eight widespread periods of significant rainfall, averaging 27.5 days of rain—the highest figure for this time of year since 1961. In Handan and Xingtai in Hebei, the rain has also fallen intermittently for more than 20 days.
According to his past experience, the usual rhythm is to plant maize in June, harvest it in September, and then sow wheat. This autumn rainfall has thrown that schedule into disarray. It is already October, and some farmers in the village have yet to bring in their crop. Uncle Li says that maize typically has a growth cycle of 115 days, but the relentless rain has stretched this year’s cycle significantly to 140 or even 150 days. If harvesting does not begin soon, the maize stalks will lodge, the stems will harden, and once chopped and returned to the soil, they will take far too long to decompose.
In some areas, maize harvesting is naturally later, extending to mid-October in central Hebei. Officials in Jiecheng Town, Fengfeng Mining District, Handan city in south-east Hebei, told us on 16 October that, due to altitude and local climate conditions, both the growing and harvesting seasons here are also later than usual. Nevertheless, leaving the crop to stand in poorly ventilated, waterlogged fields continues to encourage moulding, and in some cases, the cobs are even beginning to sprout.
Jiecheng Town has 8,000 mu of maize under cultivation, and a local farmer, Zhao Feng (a pseudonym), has contracted 1,000 mu of it. Foodthink found in his fields that numerous plants are infected with green mould and ear rot. The fungal patches are also spreading further along kernels that have been pecked or bored by birds and insects.
The maize in the fields cannot wait any longer. Yet, it is proving difficult for farmers to harvest on schedule. Bringing heavy machinery like wheeled harvesters onto fields waterlogged by rain compacts the soil. Even if operators attempt to work, the machines are likely to skid or become bogged down in the mud, unable to move.
In Quzhou county, Handan, a farmer in Xiaoyizhuang Village who has contracted more than 200 mu of land tried to drive a harvester into the fields. However, after clearing only a small patch of maize, the operation had to be halted, leaving behind a chaotic pattern of tyre tracks. In Zhuzhuang Village, Shangqiu, some farmers have even stationed a tractor nearby to act as a rescue vehicle for harvesters that get stuck.
Zhao Feng, who cultivates 1,000 mu in Jiecheng Town, Fengfeng Mining District, owns two tracked harvesters. These machines are lighter and distribute their weight across tracks rather than wheels, making them better suited for waterlogged terrain. Yet he still cannot harvest—the tractor used to collect the cobs still cannot get into the fields. He has too much land; many plots stretch dozens, even hundreds, of metres in length, making manual labour or three-wheel trucks impractical. For Zhao Feng, harvesting 1,000 mu would require nine or ten workers labouring continuously for 10 to 15 days. But by 17 October, just a few days after a brief pause in the rain, it began falling again. He has yet to find a suitable window to begin.
Mr Li in Shangqiu also managed to harvest just over two mu by hand. The soil was so waterlogged that three-wheeled farm vehicles kept bogging down. He had to cut down maize stalks and lay them down as a makeshift path before he could drive his three-wheeler into his own field. Harvesting by hand, however, is slow and back-breaking. And after all, a person is not a machine. “I managed to clear a mu on the first day,” Mr Li said. “By the second day I couldn’t keep that up, and had to settle for half a mu.”
In the end, Mr Li had to call in a combine harvester. Much of the maize across his remaining four mu had already gone mouldy, and he needed to get it off the ground before it was lost.
In the rush to salvage their crops, many farmers are facing costs significantly higher than in previous years. In Mengcun, Xiuwu County, Jiaozuo, Henan, resident Cheng Xiaoling is a major local grower who has also partnered with other large-scale farmers to form a grain cooperative. He explained that while hiring local harvesters qualifies for a subsidy, those machines are all wheel-driven and struggle on waterlogged ground. As a result, many farmers are willing to forgo the subsidy in favour of bringing in crawler-type harvesters from outside the region.
In Xiaoyizhuang Village, Feixiang District, Hebei, there is not even a harvesting subsidy. One local farmer managed to snatch a harvest during two brief dry spells just before the Mid-Autumn Festival, but hiring machinery cost 80 yuan a mu—some 20 to 30 yuan above the usual rate. Elsewhere in the area, numerous farmers have simply been waiting out the weather. Even when wheel-type harvesters are idle at the field edge, they refuse to let them in, fearing the machinery will compact and ruin the soil, and would rather risk delaying the harvest.
As of 18 October, whether in the Fengfeng Mining District to the west of Handan, or in Quzhou and Feixiang to the east—where arable acreage is considerably larger—Foodthink found that only small, scattered households have managed to bring in their maize, carrying it out of the fields by hand, sack by sack. Meanwhile, large-scale growers operating hundreds of mu, who rely entirely on machinery, have yet to begin harvesting.
II. Unable to Sun-Dry or Kiln-Dry, the Cobs Continue to Mould and Sprout
Yet freshly picked corn cobs can actually hold more moisture than when left in the soil. Left damp without proper drying, they can go mouldy overnight.
Large enterprises, led by Sinograin, only purchase “dry kernels” – corn kernels with a moisture content of under 14%. Yet freshly harvested corn typically contains between 20% and 30% moisture. In past years, Henan farmers could spread their harvest across open ground and dry it within two days.
However, amid continuous rain, a stable drying yard with a hard surface is a luxury for most smallholders. On muddy or brick ground, corn cobs absorb dampness from below, causing them to warm up, rot, or even ferment. Further downpours are always possible, and covering the cobs with plastic sheeting to shield them from rain only traps more moisture inside. As one internet user quipped: “Leave it uncovered and it sprouts; cover it and it moulds.”
Larger-scale drying facilities are even scarcer. For instance, a grower in Zhuzhuang Village, Shangqiu, who farms over 100 mu of land, has little choice but to constantly shuffle the cobs across a cramped open space. Meanwhile, grain depots and merchants purchasing on a larger scale have to use wheel loaders to turn the corn every day.
Mr Chen in Xicai Village, Xian County, Cangzhou, Hebei, farms a contract of 300 mu and is relatively fortunate: he has a dedicated drying yard. After the National Day holiday, rain fell for a week – shorter than in Handan and Henan – so the several thousand jin already harvested have remained in good condition. However, the yard’s brick foundation was completely saturated by the downpour. Bricks shifted into the mud, causing heavy lorries to lurch on entry, and halting further harvesting. The couple rushed to hire labourers to pour a concrete base, but by 17 October only a small fraction of the work was finished. The project has already cost them more than 100,000 yuan.
In most of the villages Foodthink visited on this trip, villagers stack maize cobs into cylindrical storage bins, piling them in courtyards or on rooftops. Uncle Chen took a different approach, purchasing steel pipes and wire mesh to construct square maize racks with an elevated base for better airflow. He proudly explained that his crop suffers fewer pest issues, making it harder for rain to seep through damaged husks. He also believes his harvest has fully ripened and dried, and his storage methods are more sound. Together, these measures have kept mould at bay.
Yet, even with maize racks identical to Uncle Chen’s, in another town within the Fengfeng Mining District west of Handan, the cobs belonging to grain purchaser Li Jun still turned mouldy quickly. He has rented a concrete yard and a large warehouse dedicated to maize storage, and only this year invested in erecting new maize racks. Fengfeng endures longer stretches of rain, lies at a lower latitude than Cangzhou, and its maize tends to ripen earlier. They had little choice but to rush threshing the crop and spread it out on the ground to dry.
The weather cleared on 13 October, and they spent three straight days spreading the kernels on concrete drying floors. Just as the moisture levels were finally dropping, the forecast on the 17th warned of another rain the next day. They were out in the fields all day, rushing to finish the harvest. “If we can’t get it all in by tomorrow, we’ll have done it all for nothing.”
Air-drying is tough; mechanical drying is even harder. Lacking drying equipment, smallholders are left with two options: sell their freshly harvested “wet” cobs or kernels at a knockdown price to middlemen, or give them a quick air-dry at home and sell them as dry kernels. The latter works out more economically, even after deducting the cob and moisture weight. On top of that, spot market prices for maize fluctuate, so many farmers store their harvest in hopes of fetching a better price later, sometimes holding on until the twelfth lunar month.
Li Jun has his eye on a dryer as well. A basic unit runs to at least a hundred thousand yuan, while larger models cost over a million. But with his rented plot lacking long-term security, he can’t risk the capital outlay.
3. Weathered the drought’s yield drop, but struggling with losses from mould
From early July to early August, Henan was gripped by widespread heat and drought. This period coincides with the critical ‘flowering and grain-filling stage’ for maize, spanning from tassel emergence and pollination through to full kernel maturity. To achieve a high number of well-filled, heavy kernels, the crop requires abundant water. The farmers longed for rain, but it failed to materialise. To combat the drought, they had no choice but to continuously pump water from boreholes to irrigate their fields.
In Mengcun, Jiaozuo, farmers needed to water their crops almost every two weeks, turning on the pumps four or five times in total. Fortunately, the local irrigation infrastructure was relatively reliable. Elsewhere, however, water tables sat so deep that farmers could manage at most two or three early irrigations. Consequently, while larger growers cultivating hundreds of mu could initially keep pace with the watering schedule, they soon found themselves unable to maintain it after just two or three rounds.
Across much of Hebei, farmers rely on deep aquifer wells. Zhao Feng, a large-scale grower in Jiecheng Town, Handan, farms land situated more than 200 metres above sea level. Pumping water from the borehole up to his fields consumes 60 yuan an hour in electricity, yet even that fails to properly saturate a single mu. Li Jun from Xinpo Town in Handan also recalled how the entire village dried up during the drought. Desperation led residents to pump water from two large reservoirs, each spanning nearly 50 mu, until the local fish farmers finally protested and forced them to stop.
‘The stalks grew tall, but refused to set ears, leaving the leaves curled at the margins,’ Zhao Feng remarked, caught between frustration and dark amusement at the stunted ‘dwarf’ maize in his fields. Despite the considerable electricity bills incurred for irrigation, he estimated that yields on the higher-lying plots would fall to less than half of last year’s harvest.
Even for farmers like Grandpa Li in Zhuzhuang Village, Zhecheng County, Shangqiu, who irrigated promptly and weathered the drought successfully, the maize began to mould in the fields by harvest time. “It just doesn’t weigh much anymore,” he noted.
Harvesting the rotten stalks also proved difficult for combine harvesters. The cutter bar operates at a fixed height; if the stalks rot from the base, the toppled maize cannot be fully gathered. Grandpa Li explained that he had initially expected a fairly high yield per mu. In previous years, he could bring in 90% of the crop, but this year it dropped to just 50–60%. The rest was simply left scattered in the fields.
Mouldy maize is also hard to sell, as grain processors have strict limits on mould content. The heavily affected cobs are often too poor even for animal feed. Some villagers only bother picking off the sound kernels, leaving the rotten cobs on the stalks to decompose back into the soil.
In the end, Grandpa Li’s four-plus mu of land in Henan yielded fewer than 3,000 jin of maize kernels. That averages out to just six or seven hundred jin per mu—half of what he would normally expect.
IV. Low Grain Prices Compound the Hardship
But the mould has been so severe that even the sound corn, salvaged with such effort, fetches a poor price. Old Li from Shangqiu, Henan, managed to harvest just under 3,000 jin of corn, only to find it sells for a little over 0.30 RMB per jin at best. His four mu (about 0.27 hectares) of land brought in less than 1,000 RMB in total, leaving him heartbroken.
Another farmer interviewed in Shangqiu said he sold every cob from his 2.4 mu of land at just 0.20 RMB per jin, bringing in a mere 200 RMB—only a tenth of what he’d normally expect.
For smallholders like Old Li, farming costs are low aside from labour, and the land typically brings in just a few thousand RMB a year. Even with heavy losses, their livelihoods can still be propped up by children working off-farm.
But larger operators who lease land face higher costs. Rent alone runs 600–1,000 RMB per mu, climbing to as much as 1,300 RMB in some areas. When confronted with natural disasters and market volatility, their business risks multiply.
Cheng Xiaolin, who leases 900 mu, calculates he’ll lose 100 RMB per mu this year due to reduced yields. In a normal season, large operators might only clear a few hundred RMB per mu. A grain grower cultivating a thousand mu in Jiecheng Town, Fengfeng Mining District, Hebei, openly admits his wish for this year is simply to sell the corn, settle all land rent and input costs with the local landowners, and keep whatever is left—maybe 80,000 to 100,000 RMB—to get by for the year.
The financial hit isn’t confined to farmers; the risk of mould travels down the supply chain, threatening traders as well. Li Jun bought corn in Nanyang at 0.58 RMB per jin, but continuous rain during transit caused the cobs to sprout in the back of his truck. By the time they reached their destination, moisture levels had exceeded 40 per cent—the maximum reading the moisture density meter could register. Ultimately, the corn kernels bought at 0.58 RMB were sold at half price, costing him 50,000 RMB across three loads. Another corn trader in Quzhou County, Hebei, took in hundreds of thousands of jin of cobs that had all begun to sprout. Selling them would mean losing 0.25 RMB per jin of wet grain; holding on risks further mould damage.
Li Jun’s warehouse now holds four grades of corn: good quality, and batches moulded by 30, 50, and 70 per cent respectively. The share of the worst grade may yet rise.
Amid the turmoil, villagers still cling to the hope that corn prices will climb. In Quzhou, Hebei, despite the fact that harvested cobs are already moulding and sprouting, and buying stations have stopped taking deliveries, some farmers remain convinced they won’t necessarily lose money this year: if the price for wet cobs rises to 0.75 RMB per jin, they might still turn a profit even after discarding a third of the crop. One can only hope this is more than mere wishful thinking.
5. Disasters Strike Year on Year, Crops Rot in Succession
Although there is still a window for planting winter wheat before the ground freezes, growers remain concerned that the delay, combined with falling temperatures, will cut yields. Cheng Xiaolin explains that the wheat’s tillering rate will be low, resulting in fewer heads. “Under normal conditions, a single seed produces four or five tillers; this year, it may only produce one, guaranteeing a reduced harvest.” To compensate, farmers have no choice but to purchase more seed. “We used to need 25 *jin* (about 12.5 kg), but now we need 40 *jin*, and we’ll likely have to increase that amount further down the line.”
In Zhuzhuang Village, Shangqiu, where farmers typically plant garlic after harvesting the corn, anxiety is even higher. Based on past experience, garlic seedlings should already have three or four leaves by now. But this year, planting is still impossible, and the seed cloves kept in storage have begun to sprout. Agricultural experts state that the absolute latest date for planting garlic is 20 October; failing that, it must go in during November. Time is running out.
Other crops have suffered losses too. Over the past few days, fig trees have reached peak ripeness. Xiao Zhu, a grower in Zhuzhuang Village, has been rising before 5 am to harvest. On 18 October alone, he picked more than 500 kg of figs, but many had split open. In just that one day, he discarded between 100 and 150 kg—roughly equivalent to an entire day’s harvest in previous years. With the persistent rain, he can no longer market the figs as fresh produce this season and will have to dry the entire crop for sale.
It wasn’t until after 3 pm that he finally found time to run the pumps. Following days of relentless rain, anyone entering the fig orchard to harvest has to wear knee-high waders. At the peak of the flooding this year, the water level rose to nearly the top of the waders. One elderly woman from the village, whose boots filled with water, was forced to head home to change before returning to the fields.
Given its proximity to Bozhou in Anhui Province—a nationally renowned hub for chilli trading—many large-scale growers in Zhuzhuang Village, Shangqiu, lease land to cultivate cash crops such as medicinal herbs and chillies. These high-value crops carry significantly higher production costs; cultivating baizhu, for example, can exceed 10,000 yuan per *mu* (0.16 hectares). When struck by severe weather like that experienced over the past two years, major cultivators can face losses ranging from several hundred thousand to over a million yuan.
Yet the nature of the disasters shifts each year. Last year, Zhu Village in Shangqiu was caught in an extreme downpour. Meteorological records show that between 07:00 on 15 July and 07:00 on 18 July, the city recorded an average rainfall of 295 mm, with five monitoring stations logging over 500 mm. In essence, it rained for three days what would normally fall across nearly half a year.
“After last year’s floods, the provincial highway was completely underwater, with children wading in to catch fish. There was nowhere to pump the water out; the levels in the ditches and on the road surface were perfectly even. My fig orchard was completely submerged for six full days,” said Xiao Zhu. In the aftermath, so many of his fig trees drowned that he had no choice but to dig them up and clear them away.
Many villagers in Zhu Village still vividly recall that storm, but while this year has been spared such extreme deluges, the unbroken spell of grey, overcast rain is just as unusual. “Last year was a total wipeout. This year we’ve still managed a harvest, but it’s been far more exhausting.”
For many, these repeated blows have become the final straw, prompting them to walk away from farming altogether. This year, land rental rates in Zhu Village have already begun to slide. Plots that previously commanded 1,000 yuan per mu have dropped to 800 yuan, while those formerly at 800 yuan have fallen to 600.
VI. Technology and Equipment Tracking the Northward Shift of the Rain Belt
Amid these persistent autumn rains, agricultural machinery previously unused in North China – such as tracked harvesters and grain drying towers – are beginning to prove invaluable.
Tracked maize harvesters remain uncommon across both Henan and Hebei. In the flat terrain of Handan’s Feixiang District and Quzhou City, a major maize-growing hub in Hebei, heavy-duty wheeled combine harvesters have traditionally been the clear favourite. In Xiaoyizhuang village alone within Feixiang District, locals have purchased fifteen units. Powerful and reliable, they are highly favoured by farmers for their ability to thresh the cobs and simultaneously chop and clear the stalks. Despite a price tag of up to 300,000 RMB per machine, some operators managed to earn back 150,000 RMB in a single season last year. By contrast, tracked harvesters are often dismissed by growers as inefficient and too slow. Of the locations we surveyed, only Hebei’s Fengfeng Mining District had adopted tracked models two or three years ago. This was a direct response to the local topography: a landscape of hills and mountains where fields are highly fragmented. When navigating tight turns, the low front profile of tracked machines makes them far less likely to tip over.
Amid the autumn rains, drying towers have become farmers’ ‘secret weapon’ for safeguarding their harvest. Cheng Xiaolin was the first to own a drying tower in Xiuwu County. In 2023, he recognised that large-scale land leaseholders were harvesting vast quantities of grain but were increasingly reluctant to air-dry it, and that mechanical drying would become the standard. Acting on this, he invested over 1 million yuan to purchase two drying towers.
In less than three years, and according to figures released by Xiuwu County authorities, the county has brought 13 drying towers into service by 2025, with a combined daily drying capacity of 1,200 tonnes. Cheng Xiaolin anticipates even more drying towers in Xiuwu County next year, as several others are already preparing to invest.
Yet the number of drying towers in Xiuwu County remains limited. Over the past few days, Cheng Xiaolin’s units have been running around the clock. Workers live and eat on-site, only managing to dash home to change clothes. Nevertheless, maize harvested in a rush continues to arrive steadily at the purchasing station. When the warehouse reaches capacity, the crops are piled in the yard and dried at the earliest opportunity.
Sun Ming, a grower of traditional Chinese medicinal herbs, is putting his drying room to somewhat unconventional use this year by assisting with the autumn maize harvest. His facility was, of course, designed specifically for drying medicinal herbs, and using it for maize is hardly economical. Yet with this year’s crop exceptionally damp, he has little choice but to utilise his existing equipment to minimise losses, and nearby growers have also enlisted his help to dry their maize.
With the rain keeping him indoors with little to do, Sun Ming, an automation graduate, set about devising a compact dryer. He drafted the plans himself, then took them to local workshops for machining, spending 3,000 yuan on a rudimentary unit. The dryer can be fueled by combustion pellets made from corn cobs or simply by firewood, channeling the hot air to dry the maize.
Using this homemade machine, Sun Ming dried the 2,000 to 3,000 jin (roughly one to 1.5 tonnes) of corn left over from his own plot. That said, it barely saw action this season. Still, it could well become a lifeline for future harvests. Sun Ming reckons that should the weather continue its current pattern, anyone farming six to ten mu (about one to 1.6 hectares) would be wise to invest in a machine like this.
However, given the limited number of such machines available in Hebei and Henan provinces, their deployment has become a key priority for government authorities in this year’s efforts to support farmers and mitigate disaster damage.
Previously, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs allocated 484 million yuan in central government funds to support disaster prevention and relief in agricultural production. This funding is designed to help affected areas across seven provinces, including Hebei, Henan, and Shaanxi, accelerate emergency harvesting with agricultural machinery, dry damp grain, and drain waterlogged fields. By 10 October, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs had also coordinated and dispatched 246,300 tracked harvester machines to meet the needs of the Huang-Huai-Hai region.
At the provincial level, by 15 October, Henan had mobilised nearly 8,000 tracked maize harvesters to ease the pressure of the emergency harvest. The province also included cutting table conversions for tracked grain harvesters in its agricultural machinery purchase subsidy scheme. Meanwhile, it mobilised 832 regional agricultural machinery service centres and 742 emergency machinery service teams to assist with the harvest. The locations and contact details for 4,963 grain drying machines across the province were made public for farmers, and 50 million yuan in disaster relief funds were allocated sequentially for drying machine incentives, autumn grain harvest subsidies, and machinery coordination.
Hebei has bolstered its emergency response for agricultural machinery. During the autumn farming season, the province expects to deploy 730,000 pieces of farm equipment, including 220,000 large and medium-sized tractors, 76,000 maize harvesters, and 168,000 wheat seeders. A reserve of 568 tracked maize harvesters and 1,292 grain dryers has been stockpiled for emergency use.
Nevertheless, during our visits in mid-October, none of the farmers in Hebei or Henan reported that they had used machinery deployed by local authorities or benefited from the special funds.
Agricultural insurance is also playing a part. Some farmers who had purchased maize insurance managed to receive compensation, albeit modest. Cheng Xiaolin, whose policy paid out 100 yuan per mu, barely broke even, while farmers in Zhuzhuang Village received payouts of around 100 yuan.
The real question remains: how many farming households will these measures actually reach, and to what extent can they genuinely help farmers mitigate the losses caused by the disaster?
In Lubianqiao Village in Jiaozuo, a villager interviewed by Foodthink told us that this year’s harvest from his 2.4 mu of maize brought in just 200 yuan. Vast quantities of maize in the fields beside the village had moulded, yet he received no compensation from agricultural insurance. “The insurance agent said this year’s situation didn’t qualify as a total crop failure. The locals got into an argument with him, but he just turned around and left, and now he doesn’t answer his phone. The power to approve claims lies with them. If they say it’s not covered, there’s nothing we can do,” he said.
In farmers’ traditional understanding, drought and waterlogging are the two most common hazards. Drought is less feared, as it can often be managed with pumped irrigation; waterlogging, however, is what they dread most. Yet, in the face of climate change, the generations of farming knowledge they have accumulated is proving increasingly ineffective, leaving them with little means of self-reliance. As disasters like these are likely to recur, the pressing question remains: under the relentless rain, who will be there to hold an umbrella for the farmers?
The names Sun Ming, Zhao Feng, and Li Jun used in this article are pseudonyms.
Foodthink members Ling Yu and Yu Yang also contributed to this article.
Editor: Tian Le