Due to living in the northern region, it has been a month of rain in the north, and today is the first sunny day. I only realized it later when I was watching the news and noticed the impact of this rain on northern agriculture. In our area, just as we were about to harvest corn, I saw farmers laying out corn on the road to dry when the rain started. It has been raining continuously until today, affecting almost the entire autumn harvest season.
Online, many farmers are risking rain, wading through water, manually harvesting corn and other crops. Large combine harvesters and other equipment simply cannot enter the waterlogged fields. Even after harvesting, the grain faces drying issues. In my area, there is only one sunny day within a month. The sun is simply not enough to dry the ground for farmers to dry their grain. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the mechanization rate of grain drying in China is only 60%, which means a significant number of impoverished small farmers cannot afford mechanical drying.
A common phenomenon seen online is that, before harvesting, the grains sprout and mold on the stalks due to the delay caused by the rain.
This rainfall not only affects crop harvesting but also delays winter wheat sowing. In northern Hebei and central Shanxi, the sowing time for winter wheat is late September to mid-October, while in Shandong, Henan, and southern Hebei, sowing occurs in mid-October. Most of the winter wheat sowing seasons have been disrupted by this rainy weather. Farmers can only rush to sow and harvest in the following days to avoid unfavorable situations such as late sowing leading to small seedlings, fewer plants, or late maturity. On my way to work at 7 a.m. today, I already saw many farmers drying grain on the road.
Actually, I originally planned to post this current affairs news a few days ago, but my internet was acting up for several days, making it impossible to upload photos smoothly, so this news was delayed until the weather cleared before posting.
My own feeling about this matter is that China’s agriculture is currently greatly affected by the natural environment, and small farmers find it difficult to avoid the impact of natural disasters. Compared to the socialist period, agriculture has regressed significantly, especially in terms of disaster resistance. Take harvesting and drying as an example: before the restoration of capitalism, socialism was comprehensively promoting agricultural mechanization. A single commune was equivalent to a people’s commune of a village or town, mobilizing thousands of people to work together, so there was no problem of grain not being harvested or not being dried after harvest.
The Loess Plateau in northern Shaanxi has been like this for several consecutive years. Specifically, it doesn’t rain during the summer, causing the crops not to grow, and the corn leaves to turn yellow. Then in autumn, it suddenly rains continuously, and the crops rot in the fields. This year there was no good harvest again. The policy of dividing land for individual farming was implemented, with each household only looking after itself, and the disaster resistance capability has indeed weakened.
There is also an issue of controlling and regulating the climate. Many petty bourgeois right-wingers on Chinese internet say that China’s meteorological departments are equipped with many anti-aircraft guns and rockets that can change the climate. However, after such abnormal weather occurs, the meteorological departments of the Chinese revisionists suddenly fall silent. I can only say that such meteorological departments are merely servants who create clear weather for the bourgeoisie’s large celebrations. As for transforming nature, they simply will not do it and do not have the capability.
Under the current extreme weather conditions, China’s farming seasons have already changed, yet no new calendar has been introduced. Officials from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development are taking this opportunity to promote drying towers and are trying to embezzle more money from public infrastructure projects.
It’s the same in my hometown; it has been raining continuously, causing the corn to mold as soon as it was harvested. Moreover, the fields are still like mud and cannot be sown at all, and machines can’t even get in. This rain has caused many places to have almost total crop failure, and the purchase price for moldy corn is only 0.2 yuan per jin, resulting in huge losses for farmers.
Many people online also say that in such a climate, it would definitely become a trigger for a peasant uprising in ancient times, as many grain-producing areas have experienced total crop failure.
The crops in the Northeast are the same. Here, we either face droughts or floods, causing abnormal crop growth. It is common to see premature death or malnutrition of crops. The small farmers here basically leave their harvest to fate, with the yield largely determined by the weather. Moreover, even if the harvest grows well due to special circumstances, the agricultural policies of Zhongxiu (中修) result in only a slight increase in income compared to crops affected by natural disasters. Therefore, the low income of most poor farmers is influenced not only by natural factors but also by the exploitative policies of Zhongxiu’s scissors difference.
Should the relationship between natural disasters and peasant uprisings in ancient times be understood this way: the relationship between natural disasters and peasant uprisings is indirect; the issue is not that natural disasters directly caused peasant uprisings, but that the landlord class regime and feudal production relations, which could not cope with natural disasters, led revolutionary peasants to be unable to continue their usual way of life and thus launch a revolution.
Yes, the problem does not lie in natural disasters themselves, but rather in the state’s inability to respond to these disasters, which causes harm to the people.
This is not the first year; last year, the corn harvest in Henan almost failed completely. This year, there was first a severe drought, and farmers had to water three times a day. Many farmers carried seedlings on their shoulders and hands to water them, but since September, heavy rains have drowned them. A large amount of unharvested corn has sprouted in the fields. The harvested corn, piled up, ferments and smokes due to excessive moisture. In addition, much of the fermented and moldy grain is toxic, but many medium-sized food processing companies buy grain from farmers at low prices and then put it directly on the market without conducting toxin tests.
The inability to cope with natural disasters can only be described as a trigger or a direct cause; the fundamental reason is that the masses of people have long been unable to continue living normally under the exploitation and oppression of the landlord class. Moreover, the landlord class’s extortion and extravagant, licentious behavior make it impossible to effectively respond to and resolve the survival issues of the peasants after natural disasters occur.
In general, it is the Confucian landlord class that arbitrarily conscripts the people’s labor to build extravagant projects, yet is unwilling to spend money on water conservancy. Or if they do build water conservancy, it is only for their own family, damaging the irrigation of others. Additionally, various suppressions of peasant uprisings, plundering, and wars all lead to severe destruction of agricultural production, which then causes various natural disasters. Under such natural disasters, these Confucian landlords, in order to maintain their own enjoyment, end up exploiting even more harshly, which sharpens class contradictions. The landlord class does have ways to deal with natural disasters: Legalist landlords would build water conservancy projects to reduce drought and flood disasters, collect various scientific materials to prevent pests and diseases, provide relief to disaster victims when necessary, maintain the population, and ensure production. Ultimately, it is by mobilizing the working people that they can resist natural disasters. But Confucian landlords cannot do this.
