"Not Too Late to Save Crops If Rain Comes Soon: What Siccawei Thinks The absence of either rain or snow, to any great degree, in the northern and eastern provinces of China, is. causing considerable apprehension, lest the early crops be ruined from drought, and the country once again become the victim of famine.
It is anticipated that in the-near future the provincial officials of Anhui and Kiangsi will place a strict embargo on the exportation of rice, since from the present outlook it would appear that these two large rice-growing provinces may only yidd sufficient to mech their own needs. In order to obtain the best quality of rice, the farmer has been accustomed to utilize "clover grass" as a fertilizer for the soil of the rice paddy. The absence of moisture has dried up this grass and consequently made the soil hard and non-productive.
Other crops will also suffer similar diminution if the present drought continues, Although not pessimistic, flour mill owners regard with no little apprehension the prospects of a poor harvest of spring wheat. An actual famine may be averted, however, if either United States or Canadian wheat may be imported at sufficiently low price, to be milled here and sold without undue increase over native wheat. Rapeseed and broad beans, which in previous years have yielded handsome revenues to their growers, are expected to be far below the average both in quantity and quality, provided of course that there is not a break in the present drought.
Although officials of the Siccawei Chservatory admitted last Sunday-that both November, December and January had been unprecedentedly dry, nevertheless they are fairly optimistic over the future, stating that if the rains come now the crops will not be far below average. It was pointed out that statistics of recent years have shown that after an unusually dry spell, the rains have increased both in volume and length of duration.
In previous years, resulting in poor crops, it was not the lack of winter rains that did the most damage, but continued aridity during the spring and early summer. The Observatory officials did not _minimize the importance of the fact that the last three months had been excessively dry both along the seaboard and in the interior as well, where the snowfall had been unusually light.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.