World’s strongest storm strikes Western Guangdong farmers on eve of harvest

Hao Nan explained that the path of Typhoon “Kajasa” actually shifted slightly to the south, reducing the area covered by Force 12 winds by nearly 90%, and the losses caused by a typhoon are directly related to the wind force level.

Furthermore, even within the Force 12 wind zone, there is a stark difference in the damage sustained by urban built-up areas compared to rural regions.

Hao Nan explained that, generally, China’s urban municipal public facilities are designed to withstand Force 12 winds; below this level, cities can generally recover quickly. Once the design limit is exceeded, however, losses increase exponentially. For rural areas, a Force 10 wind zone is enough to cause devastating impacts on agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fisheries and their basic infrastructure. Such losses are difficult to avoid and can only be mitigated, which is why it is essential to increase climate resilience in vulnerable rural areas.

Between 08:00 on 24 September and 08:00 on 25 September during Typhoon “Kajasa”, wind levels in the Yangjiang urban area reached Force 13 or above, causing serious damage. Meanwhile, in the township and rural areas of Hailing Island in Yangjiang and the Upper and Lower Chuan Islands in Taishan, wind levels reached Force 14 to 17; as two small townships, the Upper and Lower Chuan Islands suffered a total communications blackout for a period.

II. Yangjiang: Net Cages Smashed, Farmers in Despair

“Resuming production is out of the question. Wiping away tears, squatting on the rafts, shouting at the sky, crying out in grief,” Zeng Xianguang, Secretary-General of the Zha Po Net Cage Aquaculture Association, told Foodthink in a raspy voice. He said many rafts on Hailing Island had been smashed or crippled: “The nets are torn, and the fish have all escaped.”

Zeng Xianguang clearly remembered 24 September 17 years ago, the day Typhoon “Hagibis” made landfall in Yangjiang. It brought Force 16 winds and was, in the 40-year memory of Hailing Island’s aquaculture, the most devastating typhoon. But “Kajasa” was even worse.

In an interview with Red Star News, Zeng Xianguang explained that within the local industry, net cage farming suffered particularly heavy losses because there are no effective preventive measures against extreme winds. Currently, the timber used for fishing rafts is of high quality and can withstand Force 11 winds, but they are helpless against winds of Force 12 or above. Before the typhoon, farmers could only use long cables to simply reinforce the rafts and sell off some of the pomfret at low prices.

But even selling was too late. “Every household was selling; you couldn’t just sell because you wanted to,” he told Foodthink. Under normal circumstances, the purchase price for Golden Pomfret is between 22 and 25 yuan per jin. However, before the typhoon hit, the price dropped by 3.5 to 4 yuan per jin compared to usual.

As for the overall losses in the aquaculture industry, each household lost hundreds of thousands or millions of yuan, but the exact amount is impossible to calculate. He noted, “No one has reported their losses yet. The various departments in Yangjiang need to compile statistics; for now, they can’t be produced.”

He gave Foodthink an example: a large-scale deep-sea farmer might have over 150 net cages, each roughly 100 metres square, holding 120,000 to 130,000 fish, each weighing nearly one jin—that represents a loss of 18 million jin of fish.

Local fisheries figures also mentioned that they have been fighting for fisheries insurance for 20 years, but “every year we try, and not once have we succeeded”. The disaster risk is too high, and insurance companies fear running at a loss.

While the risks are high, profits are declining. “It’s worse every year, running at a loss,” Zeng Xianguang said. Due to multiple factors, traditional coastal wooden raft farming has not been profitable in recent years. Coastal farming pollutes the ecosystem and suffers from poor water quality, meaning it is being phased out, while production costs have risen. Additionally, feed prices have increased by more than 20%, and suppliers now demand cash payments. More fatally, the purchase price of pomfret is being squeezed further.

He said that now, only fishermen with large ships for deep-sea farming who can also handle transport and trade are making a profit. However, there are currently 462 coastal wooden raft farms on Hailing Island, compared to fewer than 100 in the deep sea.

In such a situation, farmers must take out loans to run raft farms. Zeng Xianguang said many farmers on Hailing Island have mortgaged their properties, but for a house worth one million yuan, they can only borrow a quarter of that at most. Some farmers have even invested their emergency savings and “money set aside for religious offerings” into their farms, yet their loans remain unpaid.

“Many people who took loans to raise fish are now so devastated they are speechless. My father just came back from the orchard and said people who farm fish nearby were just slumped over their fish ponds in despair,” observed Huang Ting, a resident of another town in Yangjiang.

Huang Ting’s father has grown fruit trees locally for over ten years, but a decade of experience and hard work could not protect them from the risks of natural disasters; the orchard suffered heavy losses. Insurance for local planting costs over 400 yuan per mu in premiums; she asked around and found that not a single affected farmer nearby had purchased it. Currently, the town’s agricultural office has opened channels for farmers to report losses, but there is no guarantee of subsidies.

A village and township documentary director and Bilibili creator known as “Yu Zhen Ji Shi” visited Zhanjiang, Maoming and Yangjiang around the time of the typhoon, interviewing many farmers and aquaculture operators. He found that losses in the townships of Yangjiang were far greater than those in Zhanjiang and Maoming, and this extended beyond aquaculture. In Yangjiang, the banana grove planted by a couple from Xinyang, Henan, and the 50,000 sugarcane plants grown by a couple from Taizhou, Zhejiang, were completely wiped out. The temporary board houses they lived in by the fields were also scattered by the typhoon, with walls collapsing and roofs flying away. The bananas were only ten days away from harvest. The growers had all been hoping to secure a good price during the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays.

Taishan, under the jurisdiction of Jiangmen City, was also devastated by Typhoon Huajia-sha. In Haiyan Town, one citrus farmer’s orchard was located just 10 kilometres from Shangchuan Island, where gusts of over Force 17 were recorded. Speaking to Jiupai News, he said his 100-mu citrus orchard and 200-square-metre temporary workshop were completely destroyed, even though he had paid to reinforce the trees with thick wooden stakes before the storm hit. The farmer added that October and November are the peak harvest months for citrus; following the typhoon, the trees will be unable to produce for two years, with losses exceeding 1 million yuan. Zhang Qing is a resident of the Shangchuan and Xiachuan Islands area, and her family runs a cold storage business. During the two-day local power outage, hundreds of thousands of yuan worth of goods remained in the warehouse, and it is still unclear how much will be lost. In recent days, she and her family have moved to the main urban area of Taishan.

Taishan is renowned for its oyster production. Zhang Qing heard from her family that the coastal oyster farms stretching from Haiyan Town to Guanghai Town have suffered catastrophic losses.

Despite this, people are putting on a brave face, preparing for the influx of tourists and business during the National Day Golden Week.

Coastal farmers typically use cage farming, while those on inland waters employ fish ponds (known locally as ‘xianwei’ or salt-ponds).But after the typhoon, the ponds overflowed, merging thousands of mu of ponds across dozens of farms into one. All the fish, shrimp, and crabs escaped.

A mud crab farmer from Xin Village in Duhu Town lost every crab in his 50-mu pond. He told Foodthink that the crabs were already mature, and farmers had hoped to wait until National Day to fetch a better price; now, the loss per mu is at least 20,000 yuan.

Official data shows that the total area of saltwater pond aquaculture in Xin Village, Duhu Town, exceeds 6,000 mu.

For these farmers, there were no effective protective measures they could take, as ponds cannot be reinforced in advance—”there is nowhere to put the soil.” On the night of the 24th, when the typhoon arrived, they were ordered to evacuate. He paid for a hotel in town out of his own pocket, and when he returned to the ponds on the 25th, “everything was gone; there was nothing left but water and grass.” His house, boat, and ponds were all destroyed.

Over a decade ago, he came here from Guangxi for aquaculture, signing a lease for the ponds with local villagers at 2,000 yuan per mu. Many local ponds are leased to outsiders; “with typhoons being so common, the locals probably don’t want to farm,” he said with a bitter smile.

Taishan has been hit by disaster before. Records show that Typhoon Tapah made landfall directly in Taishan, Guangdong, at 8:50 am on 8 September, with central winds of Force 11. Combined with astronomical spring tides, it triggered severe seawater intrusion, devastating aquaculture in Duhu, Haiyan, and Lianzhou in Zhuhai.

“It flooded before, but not as badly as this time,” the farmer said.

The water has still not receded. On the 25th, he paid to hire an excavator to rebuild the earthen embankments around the ponds.

A mud crab farmer from Chixi Town in Taishan also sent a video of the damage. “It’s over. I’ve lost everything.” In the video, the ponds had completely collapsed; the empty, torn nets held not a single crab, and some farmers stood despondently beside overturned colour-coated steel sheds. This farmer, born in the 1980s, had previously shared his crab-farming expertise with passion on his video account.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” This was the final sentence of his reply.

People in Taishan have decades of experience fighting typhoons. In Zhang Qing’s memory, in the early 2000s, two large ships from her home fishing port sank near the Nansha Islands during a storm, killing over 200 people; the father of one of her kindergarten classmates died in that disaster. Now that information is more accessible, fishermen no longer stay aboard their boats during a typhoon, facing life or death with their vessels.

But in the face of increasingly violent extreme weather, how much longer can the farmers and fishermen hold out?

IV. Seawater Inundation: The Long Road to Recovery and Hope

Hao Nan specifically highlighted the intense storm surges likely triggered by Hagupasa: seawater inundation, which causes irreversible damage to coastal farmland. In 2014, when Super Typhoon Rammasun made landfall in Wenchang, Hainan, the Luodou Farm suffered a similar fate. Located on the west side of Dongzhai Port, where it extends into the Hainan mainland, the farm sat on a stretch of inland coastal plain that was originally fertile and productive. However, after prolonged seawater erosion, salt seeped into the soil, turning it into saline-alkali land; consequently, the farmers were forced to switch to salt-tolerant rice. To make matters worse, coinciding with an astronomical tide, low-lying areas in the Pearl River Delta, Yangjiang, and Jiangmen suffered severe storm surges during Typhoon Hagupasa. For instance, the Sanjiangkou tide gauge station in Jiangmen recorded a water level of 2.81 metres, exceeding the alert level (1.8 metres) by 1.01 metres and breaking the historical record of 2.79 metres set in 1952.

Based on satellite imagery and topographical analysis, Hao Nan noted that parts of the Jinwan District of Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Zhongshan, and Yangjiang near the Pearl River Delta were all hit by storm surges. Within these, the Jinwan District of Zhuhai features a “trumpet-shaped” geography where the land narrows sharply, causing the storm surge to be most intense. Even before making landfall, while the core of the typhoon was still on the periphery of the Pearl River Delta, it had already pushed the seawater inland.

Reports indicate that ten years ago, 13,400 mu of land in Pingsha Town, Jinwan District, had already begun to undergo salinisation due to seawater inundation and natural conditions, and was already in the midst of a long recovery process. In addition to the wind damage, Foodthink observed through short-video platforms that orchards owned by some citrus farmers in Xinhui, Jiangmen, have also been eroded by seawater.

Compared to the immediate, visible losses such as destroyed fish rafts and snapped fruit trees, the problems brought by seawater inundation—such as groundwater pollution, soil salinisation, and wetland degradation—cover larger areas, are more hidden, and take far longer to repair. Simply put, seawater inundation does more than just salinise the soil; it also disrupts or inhibits the activity of soil microorganisms, which in turn affects the microbially-mediated cycling of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, and iron. Of course, even without knowing the microscopic findings of scientists, farmers can look at land that has been soaked in seawater and understand the scale of the devastation.

Seawater inundation also alters the distribution of heavy metals in the soil. Researchers from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found through experiments that increased salinity affects the mobility of cadmium in the soil, which may lead to an accumulation of cadmium in rice. In other words, it is not only the farmers who suffer, but potentially the consumers who rely on rice as a staple food.

However, with climate change, such record-breaking storm surges will become more frequent. Meanwhile, rising temperatures are causing sea levels to rise—one a sudden shock, the other a slow creep. Combined, these effects will further exacerbate seawater inundation in the future.

What happens next? “Keep going (grinning face emoji).” This was the reply from a farmer from Dong’an, Hunan, who grows sugarcane in Jiangmen, on his video channel.

In a video posted on 25 September, dozens of mu of his sugarcane fields were submerged in a few centimetres of standing water. Fortunately, they “narrowly escaped,” and not many of the canes were blown over. Before the typhoon arrived, he had reinforced the entire field using thick branches and network cables. “I’ve done everything I possibly could! I just hope you (the typhoon) will be merciful!”

This year, he plans to return to his hometown for the New Year. Next year, he will continue to plant sugarcane.

*All maps used in this article are from the Guangdong Provincial Public Map Service website, available at: https://nr.gd.gov.cn/map/#/public/standar- map/map-class/%E5%B9%BF%E4%B8%9C%E7%9C%81%E5%85%A8%E5%9B%BE

Foodthink Author

Pei Dan

A copywriter who has returned to the right path, focusing on climate change, the ecological environment, and the individuals affected by these shifts

 

 

 

 

Huang Ting and Zhang Qing are pseudonyms

Edited by: Ling Yu, Tian Le