Record Rainfall Spoils Crops in China, Rattling Its Leaders

After weeks of drought, farmers in the typically arid agricultural belt in northern China were ill prepared for the torrential rain that inundated fields earlier this summer and decimated their crops of eggplant, cucumbers and cabbage.

Farmers in the city of Shijiazhuang, 180 miles from Beijing, showed in a video posted to social media in late August how days of downpours and an overflowing reservoir had turned soil into sludge unfit for growing plants. Across the country, a shift in weather patterns has caught people off guard, with floods arriving two months earlier than usual in the south and then extending to northern and eastern provinces that are more accustomed to summer drought.

The prices of many vegetables nationwide rocketed, some by up to 40 percent, reaching their highest level in five years and hitting the pocketbooks of consumers who already face hard spending choices as China’s economy has slowed.

The extreme weather is a challenge not only for China’s people: The country’s leaders attach great importance to ensuring they can feed its 1.4 billion-person population, seen as necessary for ensuring social stability. They also want people to spend more on consumer goods to boost the sluggish broader economy, rather than paying higher prices for staples such as food.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, held an emergency meeting of his cabinet in late July to discuss the flooding and its toll on the people. He had a clear message, state media reported: Keep agricultural losses to a minimum and ensure food security. Other senior leaders, including the premier Li Qiang, who is more often photographed in factories and halls of power, made rare visits to shelters and inspected flood-control projects, calling on local