Vegetables “Steaming from Above, Drowning from Below”: How Do Farmers Weather a Summer of Extreme Heat and Relentless Rain?

Those living in Beijing have felt the summer stretching on, with higher temperatures and humidity both morning and evening. The stifling, steamer-like weather made one feel transported to the south. Netizens joked: “Beijing’s climate is turning into Shanghai’s, and Shenzhen’s into India’s.” Indeed, a recent study predicted that by the end of this century, Beijing’s climate will resemble that of Xinxiang in Henan today, Shanghai’s will rival Pakistan’s, and Shenzhen will be as hot as northern India.

According to statistics from the Beijing Climate Centre, Beijing’s highest temperature this year reached 38°C. While the peak is not as extreme as last year’s 41.1°C, the number of hot days has been above average, accumulating to 18 days in total. The last hot day fell on 22 August, later than in previous years. Combined with above-average temperatures both day and night, the overall feeling is that this summer has been persistently hotter.

Rainfall has also increased markedly. China Weather reports that from June to 26 August, the Beijing Southern Suburb Observatory recorded 37 rain days and cumulative rainfall of 740.9 mm – roughly double the norm for the same period. During 7–26 August alone, the observatory logged 9 rain days, slightly above the average of 6.87, with total precipitation of 325.1 mm – nearly 4.6 times the norm for that stretch.

Persistent heat and relentless rain – steaming from above, drowning from below – even people find it hard to endure, let alone the crops in the fields.

I. This Year Is Different from Last Year

Liu Gang had seen something similar once before, last year.

That was in late July 2023, when Typhoon Doksuri unleashed a once-in-sixty-years downpour across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. After ten years of farming, it was the first time Liu Gang had faced such an extreme rain disaster. He raced against the sky: the moment the rain eased, he rushed into the seedling nursery with his workers to save the vegetables. But many still drowned, and those grown in open-field cultivation were almost entirely wiped out.

Liu Gang recalled that last year, although the downpour was ferocious, it was brief. Xiaoliushu Farm had received advance notice from Shunyi’s agricultural authorities and made preparations early on. But this August, while the rain was not as extreme as last year, it simply would not stop – it fell nearly every day. “Last year our seedlings survived; this year they’re all waterlogged,” Liu Gang said.

After last year’s record-breaking downpour, Liu Gang took the lesson to heart and upgraded his drainage measures: row spacing for open-field vegetables was widened to 1.6 metres, and raised-bed cultivation was adopted to facilitate mechanised weeding. The seedling nursery also switched to raised beds. In a heavy rain, the raised beds give the water around the roots a buffer, helping to prevent waterlogging at the base of the plants. But no amount of good preparation can withstand endless rain. The soil water content reached saturation, with nowhere for the excess to drain, and many vegetables still drowned. Both people and tractors sank into the mud, unable to move.

When asked about emergency measures, affected farmers all said the same thing: drainage, and nothing else. But the rainfall was simply too much, the groundwater saturated, and there was nowhere for the water to go.

Lianxiang Farm in Chengde, Hebei, was flooded too.

Around 19 August, the city of Huludao in Liaoning province was hit by historically rare, sustained torrential rain. The volume, intensity and extent all far exceeded forecasts, making it the heaviest rainfall since records began in 1951. Ten people were killed and fourteen went missing. Lianxiang Farm sat squarely in the storm’s path and endured the worst rain since the land was first cleared. The water formed a churning, yellow-mud stream that washed away the nearby road. Neither vehicles nor people could get through.

Farm owner Yingying made a “surprising” discovery: an abandoned well on the farm, unused for years, had started bubbling water. Seeping up from the oversaturated soil, it flooded the freshly levelled ground inside the polytunnel. It took almost fifteen days to drain. Lianxiang Farm’s autumn sowing schedule was delayed as a result.

III. “No Measures Against Natural Disasters”

Farmers regard this year’s rain in north China as a natural disaster: even the best land is overwhelmed by two months of unbroken rain.

It is true that farming has always been at the mercy of the weather, but with extreme weather now occurring so frequently, past experience can no longer shield farmers from climate-related disasters. In a normal year, farms in north China might face a minor dry spell in summer or deal with a few pests and diseases; experienced farmers know when to irrigate heavily, to set up pest and disease prevention in advance, or to make up for losses later.

“All you can do when it rains is drain – against a natural disaster, there are no countermeasures,” said Xiankong, owner of Kongkonggu Farm, to Foodthink.

Kongkonggu Farm is situated in Pinggu, Beijing. The rain took a near-total toll on its fruiting vegetables, especially aubergines, chillies and tomatoes. Drainage proved so difficult that the recently planted cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli all drowned as well.

Kongkonggu Farm has weathered storms in past years, but Xiankong considers the two full months of rain this summer in Beijing to be a climatic anomaly, incomparable with any previous season. “This year’s weather is a consequence of climate change as a whole. Farmers simply have no capacity to respond to natural disasters.”

It was never one misfortune alone. Since June, extreme weather disasters have swept across the country. In late June, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, Guangxi, Guizhou and other regions experienced prolonged episodes of extreme rainfall, yet at the same time, provinces including Hebei, Henan, Shandong and Sichuan were suffering severe drought.

By July, the drought-stricken north was hit by heavy rain without respite. The anxious anticipation farmers had felt about the drought was quickly washed away, and the crops they had struggled to keep alive were immediately submerged. After the rain, temperatures did not cool as they once would have; instead, the heat persisted. Experts warn that climate change will increase the frequency of abrupt drought-to-flood transitions, posing a severe threat to food security.

Such weather has slashed summer fruit and vegetable yields. Worse was yet to come. Early August is traditionally the time to sow autumn crops in north China, but the land remained too wet and muddy for planting. “We couldn’t get the Chinese cabbage and radishes sown at all. It took enormous effort – we tried again and again before the seedlings finally emerged,” Xiankong said.

Many farmers have delayed sowing by three weeks to a month, unable to plant their autumn crops until early September. This will inevitably affect the winter vegetable harvest.

IV. Farmers Lose Money, Consumers Can’t Afford Vegetables

The vegetable price rises triggered by extreme weather ultimately fall on consumers. This summer, several vegetable production bases across the country were hit by droughts and floods. In August, vegetable prices were climbing not only in Beijing but also in Shanghai, Shandong, Sichuan, Hebei, Henan and other regions. The unit prices of everyday vegetables such as cucumbers, tomatoes, aubergines and bell peppers left consumers exclaiming they could barely “afford to eat them”.

According to national wholesale price data for 28 key vegetables monitored by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, from 16 June to 15 August the national daily vegetable price rose from 4.27 yuan/kg to 6.01 yuan/kg, an increase of 40.7%. During 22–28 July alone, the price reached 4.91 yuan/kg – the highest figure for that period in nearly a decade.

This year’s rain has delayed autumn sowing across much of north China by about a month, meaning the harvest will also be a month late. In a twelve-month year, losing one month’s harvest means losing one month’s income.

Farmers practising ecological cultivation have suffered even greater losses. Compared with conventional cultivation, ecological farming follows a model of “limited supply, premium quality, premium price”. The unrelenting rain not only wiped out many crops entirely but also greatly diminished their flavour – all of which are direct losses.

Moreover, ecological cultivation incurs higher disaster-related costs than conventional farming. For instance, excessive rain sends weeds proliferating wildly. Conventional farmers simply increase the dose of herbicide and spray; ecological farmers, by contrast, rely more on mechanical or manual weeding. With more weeds, labour and fuel costs inevitably rise. Yingying of Lianxiang Farm said that this year, one plot at Lianxiang Farm became so overgrown with weeds that she simply could not pull them all out and had to give up, letting the weeds run rampant.

At Kongkonggu Farm, the apples rot at the first sign of rain. Surrounding conventional orchards spray fungicide to keep the apples growing despite the downpours. But Kongkonggu practises ecological cultivation and cannot follow conventional methods, so the apples could not be saved.

In truth, farmers encounter all sorts of problems every year, and the more they face, the more experience they gain. Those practising ecological cultivation mostly rely on physical pest control or natural farming methods, so each one has honed a remarkable “knack” for making a living at the weather’s mercy. When it comes to withstanding summer droughts and floods, or battling pests and diseases, they all have their own strategies. But the extreme weather of recent years has turned these veteran farmers – some with a decade under their belts – back into complete beginners.

Asked what improvements he plans to make to cope with ever more unpredictable extreme weather ahead, Liu Gang said that Xiaoliushu Farm’s drainage will be connected to the drainage system the government has built for farms in the surrounding area.

Liu Gang explained that this drainage system had existed for some time, but few farmers used it, so in places the channels had become blocked and were nearly abandoned. Farmers in north China are accustomed to a relatively dry climate; for many years they had no need for this system and paid little attention to the blockages. But after this summer’s unending rain, farmers raised the drainage issue with the government. Only recently, the authorities relaid the drainage pipes in public areas. Once the autumn harvest is over, Liu Gang will be back to installing drainage works on the farm itself. He hopes that with drainage upgraded both on and off the farm, they can weather a season like this next year.

Xiankong said the only option is to get drainage in place in advance and then choose varieties suited to the terrain – for example, planting more waterlogging-tolerant vegetables such as taro in low-lying, easily flooded spots, or digging deep drainage channels.

“But if a real disaster strikes again, no measure will be of any help.”

References

“How Hot Will China’s Future Be: Beijing Becomes Henan, Shenzhen Becomes India?” https://www.bjnews.com.cn/detail/172138062619114.html

“Experts Tackle Four Hot-Button Climate Questions: Just How Hot Is Beijing This Summer?”

https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1809313354020679257&wfr=spider&for=pc

“Just How Hot Is Beijing This Summer?”

https://hqtime.huanqiu.com/article/4JJambizGEo

“Vegetable Prices Are Rising – What’s Behind It?”

http://www.scs.moa.gov.cn/gzdt/202408/t20240826_6461298.htm

Foodthink contributor

Kairui

A tropical islander, a cross between north and south.

 

 

 

 

Unless otherwise stated, all images are courtesy of the interviewees

Editor: Lingyu