BEIJING, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government has vowed to ensure a steady supply of farm produce, which has been threatened by the heavy snow that has fallen since mid-January, the worst in five decades.
Supply shortages are causing another round of price rises for agriculture products, for instance those which make up essential daily food.
Southern regions where farmers grow crops over winter were stricken severely by the bad weather, said a leading agricultural policy decision maker Chen Xiwen on Thursday.
"The blow was especially hard on vegetable production, which was ruinous in some places," he said.
The snow hit 105 million mu (7 million hectares) of farmland, mainly in the middle and downstream Yangtze River, and crops were entirely destroyed on 11.3 million mu, according to the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA). Cole and other vegetables, oranges and wheat were especially hard hit.
Dairy and meat supplies were under pressure from the cold as well as shortages of animal feed and water. Some 874,000 pigs, 85,000 cattle, 459,000 sheep and 14.4 million poultry had died, according to Chen Weisheng, who is in charge of husbandry with MOA.
Tight supplies were exacerbated by shipping disruptions caused by the unrelenting snow and sleet over much of China. Premier Wen Jiabao vowed to ensure the transportation of daily necessities.
In order to protect agriculture, which is "still the weakest link" in national economy, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council, or China's cabinet, jointly issued the first document of this year.
One of its aims was to ensure stable prices of agriculture products, which would prevent China from slipping deeper into the predicament of high-flying inflation.
Since food has a weighting of 32.74 percent in the CPI, the stable supply of such commodities, farm produce in particular, will be a decisive factor behind China's efforts to curb inflation.
The public has started to feel the pressure as vegetable prices escalated across the country. In Changsha, Wuhan and other hard-hit cities in the southern, central and eastern regions, vegetable prices have more than doubled. Areas not affected by snow, such as Beijing and the southern Guangdong province, have also seen price rises.
"Greenhouse vegetables sold in Beijing relies relatively on transport from the south. There were more than 10 trucks with a load of 20 tons before, now there's only one or two coming because of the snow. When a truck comes, we all swarm to it however high the price is," said Huang Tianlu, a 45-year-old wholesaler at Xinfadi market, the largest farm produce market in Beijing.
Zhuang Jian, senior economist with the Asian Development Bank mission in China, said rising prices, forced up because of supply disruption caused by the rare snowstorms, would definitely affect the inflation rate.
"I believe the CPI for January will hit around seven percent," he said. However, the bad weather would only be a short-term factor.
"The heavy winter snow would have a more immediate impact on farm produce and grain production," he said, "and the impact would be more apparent in a longer term."
Funds of 100 million yuan (about 13.9 million U.S. dollars) had been allocated for disaster relief and agricultural experts had been sent to affected areas, said Wang Shoucong, a senior MOA official.
The nation's chief planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said on Thursday that temporary price controls had been implemented in all 31 provinces and municipalities on the Chinese mainland as of Jan. 26. It said that the policy would limit price hikes of daily necessities ranging from meat and eggs to liquefied petroleum gas.
China harvested 500 billion kilograms of grain in 2007, achieving production growth for the fourth year in a row. But Agriculture Minister Sun Zhengcai said the output still failed to meet domestic demand for the year, and the country was forced to impose duties on grain powder at the start of year 2008 to limit export and ensure domestic supply.
"We should vigorously ramp up oil production, encourage cotton and sugar production; we should do a good job to guarantee staple food production, including meat, poultry, eggs, milk and vegetables; we should reinforce agriculture standardization and guarantee safety of agriculture products," Chen said.
To combat the difficulties in balancing the supply and demand of farm produce, the government has decided to invest more funds in the countryside this year as part of its efforts to boost agricultural development and narrow the widening urban-rural gap, said the first document.
Official statistics show that over the past decade, Chinese per-capita grain supply decreased from 412 kg in 1996 to 378 kg in2006.
The low prices of farm produce have reduced the farming population, which means fewer people produce grain and more people who only consume. Meanwhile, 210 million of the 900 million rural population have begun to work for urban and township enterprises.
"The prices of agriculture products should be kept at a reasonable level, which would ensure that farmers get enough profits, and at the same time remain affordable to consumers," Chen said.
