In parts of South Korea, potatoes are being ruined before they can be lifted from the ground, turning soft as though boiled. The condition has appeared in potato fields after weeks of record high temperatures.
Local media reported that farmers in the mountainous north-eastern province of Gangwon dug up their potato fields to find nothing worth harvesting, although the crop had looked healthy only a week earlier.
Lee Sang-hyuk farms in the Haean area of Yanggu County, near the North Korean border. He told the local broadcaster SBS: “It is not that this has happened in just one or two fields. I really do not know how to describe it. I am deeply disheartened.”
Lee said he had farmed for 40 years and had never seen anything like it.
Cabbage fields covering several thousand pyeong nearby, a pyeong being about 3.3 square metres in Korean measure, have also been destroyed. Farmers there had delayed harvesting in the hope of a better price, and the cabbages burned in the field in the extreme heat. They were later ploughed back into the soil. The lost cabbages were worth tens of millions of won.
Gangwon province, where both farms are located, saw its first extreme heatwave warnings of the month issued in the mountainous north-east, covering the cities of Chuncheon, Hongcheon and Hoengseong.
Farmers say the heat is affecting not only vegetables but orchards. Apple skins are scorching and changing colour in direct sunlight, and peaches are splitting.
Apple grower Chun Jong-tae told SBS that apples due to begin ripening and colouring around the Chuseok festival in late September had stopped growing normally. Only the side facing the sun was turning red, he said, and if the heatwave continued there was a risk the apples would turn white.
According to South Korea’s Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, at least 31 people have died in the extreme heat. More than 900,000 head of livestock and 1.4 million farmed fish have also died.
On Aug 2 the temperature in the south-eastern city of Yangsan reached 42.5C, South Korea’s highest since modern record-keeping began in 1904. By comparison, the United Kingdom’s highest recorded temperature is 40.3C, set at Coningsby in Lincolnshire in July 2022.
Farmers as well as crops are suffering badly. They say official advice to stay indoors during the hottest part of the day is impossible for them to follow, because the crop in the field is being destroyed in the meantime.
Peach grower Park Won-son said: “They have advised us not to go out and work during the day. But the peaches are rotting.”
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung told his cabinet that the country had never seen weather conditions like these, and called for major changes to the national disaster response system. Such extreme weather, he said, was gradually becoming the new normal.
Damage assessments so far have been based mainly on deaths and livestock losses. Officials have not yet been able to determine the extent of crop damage.
Food prices in South Korea were already high. Farmers fear they could rise further ahead of Chuseok, the three-day autumn harvest festival in late September, when families buy large quantities of food for festival meals.
Potatoes are among the crops researchers have identified as being at risk from extreme heat.
A study published in the journal Potato Research in 2024 said heat-tolerant potato varieties would be needed for summer cultivation in South Korea whatever the climate conditions. The study, by scientists at Germany’s Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research and the Brandenburg University of Technology, also found that spring potatoes could yield better if planted earlier.
Temperatures in South Korea had reached almost 40C before a storm brought temporary relief. Temperatures of 40C or above have also been recorded in several places in Japan.
Hong Kong reached 36.9C, its highest since record-keeping began in 1884. A weather station in China’s Xinjiang region recorded 50C in July.
The World Meteorological Organization’s recent State of the Climate in Asia report said warming in Asia over the past 35 years has been almost twice as fast as in the preceding three decades.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report