Coordinated response to risks can help boost agricultural resilience

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has launched a level-III emergency response for agricultural relief following severe drought conditions in some parts of China's northern, central and eastern regions, while the Ministry of Finance has allocated 443 million yuan ($61.02 million) to support drought relief measures and help affected farmers complete sowing seeds during summer.

While the drought in North China is worsening, heavy rainfall continues to hit parts of South China. Guangdong province recently upgraded its level-III disaster relief emergency response to a higher level. The simultaneous "flood in the south and drought in the north" has brought considerable losses to the country.

Worse, in the coming days, some areas are expected to see a drastic shift from drought to flood, increasing the pressure on China's overall coordination capacity of flood control and drought relief at the national level. This means that cross-regional and cross-departmental consultation, research and judgment, early warning systems, resource allocation and information delivery should be more flexible, more efficient and more accurate.

Local emergency and disaster prevention and mitigation mechanisms should make more efficient responses, and the focus should shift from drought relief or flood control to both drought relief and flood control. It is necessary for China to comprehensively improve its ability to build agricultural risk resistance.

The risk of spillover from geopolitical conflicts has intensified. Whenever signs of pending disturbance emerge, some countries wantonly restrict food exports, affecting the world's normal trade in agriculture.

The country should make overall coordinated arrangements for agricultural development and agricultural security, and enhance risk awareness. It should build an agricultural risk prevention and control system to improve its agricultural production capacity, optimize its agricultural structure, enhance its agricultural resilience and guarantee its agricultural incomes. Better agricultural infrastructure, technology popularization and insurance futures should be given full play so that different risk management tools can play their role in promoting the country's agricultural development.

-ECONOMIC DAILY