A SAFE RICE BOWL

For months before the summer harvest, Liu Tianhua, the head of a rural cooperative, was on tenterhooks. The cooperative in Henan Province in central China had sown wheat over 3,000 hectares, a work of mammoth labor that had been made even more arduous by a series of problems.

First, the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in spring interrupted farming and then the wheat was infected by stripe rust, a fungal disease, followed by dry weather in May. However, after harvesting started at the end of May and was nearly completed within a week, Liu could finally heave a sigh of relief. It was a bumper harvest.

Farmers nationwide shared the same exhilaration, as on June 15, when 90 percent of the summer grain had been harvested, there was official confirmation of the plentiful yield.