GUANGZHOU - Gong Ganquan looks gloomy and depressed these days as his long wait continues.

The farmer from the Zhengguo township of Zengcheng, which is a suburb of Guangzhou, has nothing to do except pray for the rain he needs to complete his spring sowing and plowing.

Gong, who is a tenant farmer on more than 13.33 hectares of rice fields, says at least 10 percent of his fields are already unsuitable for a rice crop this year because of the severe drought that has hit the area.

"That will definitely affect the summer harvest here this year, despite the fact that some of the fields have been planted with rice and other crops," Gong said.

Guangzhou, which is the capital of Guangdong province, has seen precious little rain this winter, according to the local meteorological department. The province has only had 206.2 millimeters of rain since October, which is about half of the amount it saw during the same period last year.

In Guangzhou's regions of Zengcheng and Conghua, more than 1,000 hectares of rice fields will not yield a harvest this year because of the drought, which is the worst since 1962.

The regions are normally major producers of rice, vegetables and fruit for Guangzhou.

Throughout Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, more than 17,000 hectares of farmland have been affected.

In the city of Heyuan in the north of the province, the dry spell is not only affecting farmland. With 19 reservoirs drying up, some locals in rural areas are suffering from a shortage of drinking water.

Yao Yufan, deputy director of Guangzhou's bureau of agriculture, said his team is encouraging farmers in drought-hit areas to plant Chinese yams and other crops that can survive drought conditions to ease their economic losses.

Huang Huanhua, a professor from the South China Agricultural University, said recent high temperatures and the absence of precipitation throughout the winter does, at least, have a silver lining - it will have helped kill pests and viruses.

The local meteorological department, meanwhile, sees no end in sight for people like the farmer Gong Ganquan and is not expecting the drought to be over until the province enters its traditional flood season in the summer.

There was some respite on Sunday at noon, when Guangzhou, Shenzhen special economic zone, Foshan, Shaoguan, Yunfu and Qingyyuan in Guangdong saw a short but sweet shower of rain.

Lu Shan, a weather forecaster from Guangdong provincial meteorological observatory, said: "The short burst of rainfall will slightly ease the province's severe drought but Guangdong's drought will not come to an end before summer."

China Daily

(China Daily 04/18/2011 page5)