Actively Responding to the Impact of Climate Change on China's Agricultural Production

Against the backdrop of global warming, the frequency and intensity of extreme drought events are steadily intensifying, and China's agricultural production is increasingly affected by extreme drought events. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that from the 1950s to the first decade of this century, the affected area of China's crops doubled, and the damaged area increased by 2.8 times; over the same period, the severity of the damage increased markedly, with the damage rate among affected areas rising from 32% to 58%; in addition, the scope of impact of extreme drought events expanded from the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the 1950s to the vast areas of Northeast China, the northwest interior and the southwest today. Improving agriculture's capacity to adapt to climate change is an important component of implementing the national master plan for climate change adaptation and is crucial to safeguarding China's food security.

The project "Research on Water Resources and Their Adaptability under Climate Change in the North China Plain and Poyang Lake Region of China" (2012-2015), led by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with the participation of Henan Agricultural University, Jiangxi Agricultural University and North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, was completed recently. A few days ago, in conjunction with this project, the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences organized the seminar "Research on Water Resources and Their Adaptability under Climate Change," introducing the project's related research results.

The project's research shows that by 2030, runoff in the six major northern river basins (the Songhua River, Liao River, Huai River, Hai River, Yellow River and the northwest interior river basins) will all tend to decrease, and agricultural water consumption in all river basins will show an upward trend, including the Yangtze River basin, the Pearl River basin, and the southeast and southwest river basins. "Without considering climate change and water resource use efficiency, by 2030 the water supply-demand gap in all river basins will be fairly obvious, and climate change will further intensify the water supply-demand gap in many river basins," said Huang Jikun, director and chief scientist of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Based on model projections, the research team found that, while keeping the total sown area unchanged, by 2030 the irrigated area in the Yellow River basin will decrease by 0.18%, with a corresponding increase of 0.18% in rainfed area, and both crop yields per unit area and total output will decrease by 1.16%.

In addition, the research shows that farmers with different incomes also differ considerably in their capacity to adapt to climate change. Low-income farmers are more vulnerable to extreme weather, and the resulting proportion of yield reduction is higher; the value of crop damage for the low-income farmer group accounted for as much as 21% of household assets, while for the high-income group this proportion was only 2%. When coping with drought, farmers in the high-income group are more inclined to adopt engineering measures, while low-income farmers are more inclined to adopt drought-resistant varieties.

At the government level, apart from the provision of early warning information, the support provided by poor counties in terms of funding, technology and materials is far lower than that of non-poor counties. Only 28% of villages in poor counties can receive support, far below the 47% in non-poor counties. The research team suggests that great importance should be attached to the capacity of poor farmers to adapt to climate change, and that this should be incorporated into national climate change adaptation and anti-poverty plans, so as to improve China's overall plan for climate change adaptation and help achieve the goal of lifting the rural poor out of poverty on schedule by 2020.

The research team proposes that although the impact of climate change on the country as a whole is not great, it will intensify water shortages in the Yellow River, Hai River, Liao River and Huai River basins, and will also have an adverse effect on the reliability of agricultural water supply. It is suggested that the water resource issue in northern China be specially included in the overall plan for responding to and adapting to international climate change, and that, in responding to climate change and water shortages, the reliability of agricultural water supply be made a key focus of work.

In order to improve the agricultural sector's capacity to adapt to extreme drought, the research team also suggests: First, the government should further increase investment in farmland water conservancy facilities, with the north in particular attaching importance to the construction of multi-source farmland water conservancy facilities; in the south, the key is to further bring out the drought resistance effectiveness of existing water conservancy projects (especially small and medium-sized water conservancy projects). Second, clarify fiscal support policies, establish and improve drought early warning information systems, and strengthen the effective dissemination of drought early warning information. It is necessary not only to use multiple channels (such as mobile phone text messages, media and government notices, etc.) to spread information, but also preferably to provide early warning information both before and after a disaster: before a disaster, mainly providing preventive information; after a disaster, mainly providing disaster relief guidance information. Third, expand the reach of drought management service policies in terms of technology, materials or funding, and increase support. The survey found that drought management services in terms of technology, materials and funding are one of the effective policies for encouraging farmers to adopt adaptive measures, but their current reach is very low. Therefore, in order to improve farmers' capacity to respond to extreme drought events, the state urgently needs to effectively implement drought management service support in terms of technology, materials and funding, and expand the reach of this service policy as much as possible, so that more farmers receive support under this policy and thus improve their adaptive capacity.