Skip to main content

RMB484mil Disaster Relief and Expedited Insurance Payouts for Rain-Soaked Harvest

"Wet soil and waterlogged farmland have hindered the movement of agricultural machinery, negatively impacting harvesting, drying, and clearing stubble for wheat sowing," according to official Chinese news media. The Xinhua report proclaimed, "We must unite our efforts to protect autumn crops and strive to overcome disasters and achieve a bumper harvest!"

A Xinhua reporter claimed to see crawler-type harvesters working nonstop. Source: Xinhua.

A special meeting on agricultural insurance indemnities was held on October 10 to consider how to speed up insurance payments to farmers impacted by heavy rains in the Huang-Huai region of northern China. The meeting was held to address complaints about slow processing of agricultural insurance claims and low payouts. Insurance companies were instructed to expedite claims, use remote sensing and drones to verify losses, pay the full amount promptly, and ensure that grain is harvested and dried. 

The meeting was convened jointly by the Planning and Finance Office of China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) and the Property Insurance Supervision Department of the State Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau. Companies engaged in agricultural insurance attending the meeting were ordered to improve their sense of responsibility and level of service. The State Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau will monitor payouts and threatened companies slow to process claims with punishment. Companies attending including PICC Property & Casualty Insurance, CPIC Property & Casualty Insurance, China Property & Casualty Insurance, China Life Property & Casualty Insurance, Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance, Zhongyuan Agricultural Insurance, Guoyuan Agricultural Insurance.

China's Finance and Agriculture Ministries issued RMB 484 million (US$ 67 million) in agricultural disaster relief funds on October 11 to provinces impacted by heavy rains, according to the web site of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Funds are to support early harvesting by agricultural machinery, drying of wet grain, drainage of farmland, and moisture-resistant sowing of winter wheat to ensure a good harvest of autumn grain and a good storage of every grain. Seven provinces received funds, including Hebei, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, Shandong, and Shaanxi.

Grain drying enterprise in Hebei Province. Source: Xinhua.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

China's Vanishing Soybean Self-Sufficiency Rhetoric

Chinese propagandists appear to have given up on soybean self-sufficiency now that China has gained the upper hand over the U.S. on the soybean trade war front. The barrage of Chinese articles about finding soymeal substitutes, low protein animal diets, corn-soy intercropping, etc. has quietly faded from Chinese media. China's plan to bolster soybean self-sufficiency actually failed, but Brazil's bottomless soybean supplies nevertheless enabled China to snub U.S. soybean producers during last year's trade war. Xi Jinping now is free to make offers of soybean purchases to President Trump in trade negotiations without appearing to do so from a weak position. Mission accomplished, but not in the way Chinese strategists planned. Back in 2019--at the height of the first U.S.-China trade war--China's "Number 1 Document" announced a "soybean revitalization plan" to increase self-sufficiency in soybeans. Soybeans were pronounced to have strategic significanc...
Post a Comment
Read more

Xi Jinping's Doctoral Thesis

Xi Jinping is the vice president and presumed next president of China but little is known about him. In this post the dimsums blog offers its contribution to the genre of Xi Jinping-ology by conveying Xi's decade-old views on agricultural markets. Ten years ago Xi Jinping wrote a thesis, "Tentative Study of Agricultural Marketization" (中国农村市场化研究) for a Doctor of Law degree at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a top breeding-ground for Chinese officials. The dimsums blogger has spent several hours poring over the 200-plus page tome to see what it reveals about Dr. Xi. The thesis is remarkably close to what China has been doing lately in agricultural policy, suggesting that Xi (or the person who actually wrote the thesis) has a major say in policy or is at least in agreement with what's being done. There is nothing adventurous, controversial (or insightful) in the thesis. It seems to be the work of a wonkish technocrat who is not prone to talk out of turn or wander from...
17 comments
Read more

Divergence in U.S. & Chinese egg prices

High egg prices are a hot topic in the United States. China, in contrast, has a glut of eggs and depressed prices.  The March 14, 2025 USDA Agricultural Marketing Service weekly eggs market overview reported that U.S. egg prices continued declining during the second week of March as the supply situation improved. No significant highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks have occurred in March and U.S. egg demand is relatively light. The average U.S. wholesale price for Grade A large white eggs was $4.15 per dozen, down sharply from their February peak.  Until 2021, Chinese and U.S. wholesale egg prices had been roughly equal at about $1-to-$2 per dozen with no trend. U.S. prices fluctuated more than Chinese prices, so the U.S. price was sometimes higher, sometimes lower than the Chinese price after converting them to dollars per dozen.  Chinese prices converted using monthly exchange rate and assuming 0.6 kg per dozen. Sources: USDA and China Ministry of Agricult...
4 comments
Read more