By Ella Cao, Florence Lo and Xiaoyu Yin

XIANYANG, China (Reuters) – About an hour by road northwest of the famed Terracotta Warriors, combine harvesters send out clouds of dust as they work their way through the parched wheat fields of Maqiao village in China’s northwestern Shaanxi province.

But local farmers like Zhou Yaping say there is little to celebrate.

Some of her crop is still tinged with green in a sign it hasn’t fully ripened, and she expects she’ll get only half the 1,000 kg of wheat her two-thirds of an acre plot usually yields.

“I’ve been growing wheat for over 20 years, and I’ve never seen a drought this bad,” said Zhou, 50, during a late May visit.

Parts of China’s wheat belt in Shaanxi and Henan provinces have been hit hard by hot, dry weather, with the sun baking the

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