'Ordinary people suffer most': China farms face climate woes
ABC News
China is the largest contributor to global warming, but meanwhile, China’s people are already suffering the brunt of climate change
JIAOZUO, China -- Wang Yuetang’s sneakers sink into the mud of what was once his thriving corn and peanut farm as he surveys the damage done by an unstable climate.
Three months after torrential rains flooded much of central China’s Henan province, stretches of the country’s flat agricultural heartland are still submerged in several inches of water. It’s one of the many calamities around the world that are giving urgency to the U.N. climate summit underway in Glasgow, Scotland.
”There is nothing this year. It’s all gone,” Wang said. “Farmers on the lowland basically have no harvest, nothing." He lost his summer crop to floods, and in late October the ground was still too wet to plant the next season’s crop, winter wheat.
On other nearby farms, shriveled beanstalks and rotted cabbage heads bob in the dank water, buzzing with flies. Some of the corn ears can be salvaged, but because the husks are moldy, they can be sold only as animal feed, bringing lower prices.
