China's drought areas eased by snow, rain

BEIJING, Feb 20 - The area of farmland threatened by drought in China has dropped below average after snow and rain led two provinces to downgrade their emergency response, the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said.

The office said about 70 million mu (4.7 million hectares) of crops were still suffering from the drought as of Thursday, 91 million mu less than the worst stage on Feb 7 and 13.8 million mu less than on Tuesday, it said in a report on its web site .

Some 56.7 million mu of wheat in the eight worst-hit provinces was suffering from drought, which was 96.7 million mu less than the worst period early this month.

Anhui and Shandong provinces, among the hardest-hit provinces, have called off their top-level emergency response, but the drought in central Henan province, China's top wheat-producing region, is still severe, the office said.

In Henan, about 15 million mu of crops were still suffering drought.