Agricultural water crisis remains unsolved, and a comprehensive plan is still lacking

Groundwater over-extracted for many years has left the North China Plain, one of China's main grain-producing regions, facing a “water shortage” crisis. On one hand, there is an increasingly scarce and precious water source; on the other hand, there is the real pressure of safeguarding the Chinese people's “grain bag” security. As a “major consumer” of water resources, how can agriculture effectively alleviate the water shortage on the North China Plain? At the recent launch meeting of the North China Region Water-Saving and Grain-Safeguarding Collaborative Innovation Initiative, more than 260 experts from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and other scientific research institutions gathered to offer solutions.

Producing grain by over-extracting groundwater is like a “subprime crisis”

The North China Plain is a major agricultural production region in China. Authoritative data show that in 2013, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region produced 6.1% of the nation's grain, 11.9% of its vegetables, 9.4% of its fruit, 6.4% of its meat, 13.3% of its eggs and 15.8% of its milk on 5.7% of the cultivated land. This shows that its strategic position in safeguarding food security is pivotal.

“Paradoxically, the per capita water resources in North China are less than 200 cubic meters, making it the region with the lowest per capita water resources in the country!” Wang Qingsuo, a researcher at the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told reporters that the current wheat-maize double-cropping system and the cultivation of vegetables and fruits in North China consume more than 800 mm of water per year, but precipitation is only 500 mm to 600 mm, leaving a large water gap. Therefore, the intensive development of agriculture has had to come at the cost of groundwater extraction, and the annual over-extraction of groundwater on the North China Plain is as high as more than 10 billion cubic meters.

Long-term groundwater over-extraction has led to the gradual expansion of groundwater depression cones. At present, the area of groundwater over-extraction in Hebei Province exceeds 67,000 square kilometers, accounting for more than 90% of the plain area. Groundwater over-extraction has not only caused a large number of motor-pumped wells to be abandoned and increased agricultural production costs, but has also triggered problems such as land subsidence, ground fissures and seawater intrusion. The ecological and environmental costs are heavy, and the water resource crisis is looming.

As American water resources researcher Postel said in 2008: “Using groundwater from geological historical periods to produce grain is like a ‘subprime crisis’ in grain production; the resulting grain production ‘bubble’ will grow larger and larger, and eventually burst.”

Under “less water, more grain,” exploring efficiency in place of expansion

“By 2030, China's population will reach 1.6 billion, and per capita water resources will be only 1,730 cubic meters, 300 cubic meters less than the current 2,000 cubic meters. But the population is still growing, and the demand for grain is increasing, so the contradiction of ‘less water, more grain’ will become more and more prominent.” Facing the real pressure of staple food, Chen Mengshan, Party secretary of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, felt deeply worried.

“‘Water shortage’ has become a bottleneck problem in China's agricultural development, and overcoming it must rely on science and technology.” As the “national team” of agricultural science and technology, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, together with China Agricultural University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other research forces, has taken improving water use efficiency as the core, efficient water use by major crops such as wheat, maize and vegetables and regional overall solutions as the main line, and started from three aspects - water-saving technology, production measures and policy mechanism research - to carry out collaborative research on efficient water use and groundwater protection in the intensive agricultural areas of North China, and has included this project as one of the three major regional key projects of the Science and Technology Innovation Project.

What is the water resource carrying capacity of each area of the North China Plain? How can crop water use be improved? How can economic compensation for farmers' water saving be realized? “If we want to use improved efficiency to replace scale expansion, these scientific questions cannot be bypassed and must be tackled one by one,” Wang Qingsuo said.

“Show the farmers, lead the farmers to do it”

The reporter noted that the primary scientific research goal of this collaborative innovation initiative is not papers or patents, but more than 10 sets of irrigation water-saving, dryland farming and cropping system adjustment plans. At the same time, the project will establish technology integration demonstration sites in 15 major grain-producing areas of the North China Plain, including Shunyi, Hengshui and Dezhou, and scientists will also go personally to the fields to teach large grain growers, hand in hand, about grain water-saving and water-use plans.

“For a long time, there has been a lot of scientific and technological research on agricultural water saving, but it has been relatively scattered, fragmented and repetitive, without technology integration, and even more lacking in technology implementation.” Chen Mengshan said that only by taking a high position and starting from joint efforts by multidisciplinary and multi-field scholars across the upper, middle and lower reaches of agriculture can highly operable and effective scientific research results be produced. “The mission of agricultural science experts should be to ‘show the farmers, lead the farmers to do it.’”

“For a long time, many agricultural technologies have still lacked a ‘sense of presence’ among farmers.” Liu Yan, deputy director of the Department of Science, Technology and Education of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that what farmers need most is overall solutions targeting major problems in real production. How to get scientific research results out of the laboratory and into the fields is, for agricultural scientists, a more difficult research project.