Tag: Agriculture and Farming

China’s Heat Wave Strains Its Economy

Chin@Strategy

Faced with China’s most searing heat wave in six decades, factories in the country’s southwest are being forced to close. A severe drought has shrunk rivers, disrupting the region’s supply of water and hydropower and prompting officials to limit electricity to businesses and homes. In two cities, office buildings were ordered to shut off the air-conditioning to spare an overextended electrical grid, while elsewhere in southern China local governments urged residents and businesses to conserve energy. The rolling blackouts and factory shutdowns, which affected Toyota and Foxconn, a supplier for…

How the Supply Chain Crunch is Hurting California Farmers.

Chin@Strategy

During a normal spring, the sight of orchards bursting with clusters of almonds is a boon throughout California’s Central Valley. Here is money growing on trees. Not this year. As Scott Phippen looks out on his orchard on a recent afternoon, he feels a sense of foreboding tinged with rage. His warehouse is stuffed with the leftovers of last year’s harvest — 30 million pounds of almonds stored in wooden and plastic bins stacked to the rafters, and overflowing into his yard. Orders assembled for customers sit in giant white…

Collateral Damage of China’s Virus Policy: Fruit

Chin@Strategy

HANOI, Vietnam — At Pham Thanh Hong’s dragon fruit orchard in Vietnam, most of the lights are turned off. All is silent except for the periodic thud of the ripe pink fruit falling to the ground. Mr. Pham, 46, is not bothering to harvest them. The farmer watched dragon fruit prices plummet by 25 percent in the last week of December to near zero, pushed down by what several officials in Vietnam say is China’s “zero-Covid” policy. “I’m too disheartened to use my strength to pick them up, then throw…

Biden’s China Dilemma: How to Enforce Trump’s Trade Deal

Chin@Strategy

“I want the farmers to come tell me, ‘Sir, we can’t produce that much,’” he added. When Mr. Trump signed the trade deal with China in January 2020, those estimates became enshrined as the word of the U.S. government. And though Mr. Biden and his deputies have criticized the trade deal for failing to address many of the most pressing trade issues that the United States has with China, they have since promised to uphold it. In a call last month with President Xi Jinping of China, President Biden underscored…