NYT: U.N. Food Agency Issues Warning on China Drought

U.N. Food Agency Issues Warning on China Drought
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: February 8, 2011



HONG KONG — The United Nations’ food agency issued an alert on Tuesday warning that a severe drought was threatening the wheat crop in China, the world’s largest wheat producer, and resulting in shortages of drinking water for people and livestock...

SNIP

...“China’s grain situation is critical to the rest of the world — if they are forced to go out on the market to procure adequate supplies for their population, it could send huge shock waves through the world’s grain markets,” said Robert S. Zeigler, the director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, in the Philippines.

The state-run news media in China warned Monday that the country’s major agricultural regions were facing their worst drought in 60 years. On Tuesday the state news agency Xinhua said that Shandong Province, a cornerstone of Chinese grain production, was bracing for its worst drought in 200 years unless substantial precipitation came by the end of this month.

World wheat prices are already surging, and they have been widely cited as one reason for protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. A separate United Nations report last week said global food export prices had reached record levels in January. The impact of China’s drought on global food prices and supplies could create serious problems for less affluent countries that rely on imported food...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/business/global/09food.html?_r=1

failure of this crop means chaos.

and go back to growing stuff.. then we could make a deal with China.. our debt is buh-byee & you get some food

then we slap a 25% RE-importation tariff on goods made there by "US" companies, and a tax CREDIT if they return those factories here & hire union labor..

We are the worlds largest single exporter of food.

And largest importer of oil.