Investigation and Reflections on How Water Conservancy Projects Can Boost the Building of a Major Grain-Producing City

As one of the 20 national commodity grain bases, Xiangyang has for many years insisted on firmly grasping grain production without slackening, ensuring an “eleven consecutive years of increase” in grain output, especially after breaking through the 10-billion-jin mark in 2012 and maintaining the 10-billion level for three consecutive years, thus making its due contribution to establishing Xiangyang's status as a major grain-producing city and safeguarding national food security. However, with the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, the reduction of total arable land, as well as factors such as environmental degradation, declining arable land quality, intensifying drought, and irrational allocation and use of water resources, adverse effects have been created for safeguarding Xiangyang's grain production capacity and consolidating its status as a 10-billion-jin major city. The provincial Party committee and provincial government attach great importance to this, and after scientific demonstration, decided to build the Northern Hubei Water Resources Allocation Project, which not only brings good news for the allocation and improvement of water resources throughout the entire Northern Hubei region, but also provides strong guarantees for raising Xiangyang's grain production capacity and ensuring that its status as a 10-billion-jin major city remains unshaken. So, how can we take this as an opportunity, under the background of the new normal of economic development, to further strengthen grain production, achieve stable grain output and increased income, improve quality and efficiency, and advance Xiangyang's transformation from a major agricultural city to a strong agricultural city? Through special investigations, we have formed some reflections.

I. Favorable Conditions for Raising Xiangyang's Grain Production Capacity

Xiangyang currently administers 9 counties (cities and districts), 78 townships, and 2,391 administrative villages, with a cultivated land area of 6.93 million mu. In recent years, centering on the strategic goal of building a strong modern agricultural city, Xiangyang has insisted on grasping grain production to ensure supply, grasping processing to increase efficiency, grasping overall coordination to promote harmony, and grasping innovation to increase vitality, continuously enhancing its grain production capacity. In 2012, it became Hubei Province's first, and the region south of the Yangtze River basin's first, 10-billion-jin major grain-producing city, with its total volume accounting for 1/5 of the province and nearly 1% of the nation. Correctly analyzing the favorable conditions for raising Xiangyang's grain production capacity helps to explore the establishment of grain production functional zones, helps to further build confidence in consolidating the status of a 10-billion-jin major grain-producing city, and mobilizes the enthusiasm of the entire city for grain production.

⟦NL> (1)  Unprecedented policy support will provide strong backing for raising Xiangyang's grain production capacity

The Central Committee's "Several Opinions on Increasing the Intensity of Reform and Innovation and Accelerating Agricultural Modernization" (2015 Document No. 1) clearly proposes that building modern agriculture and accelerating the transformation of agricultural development methods must center on the core of safeguarding national food security. The "Opinions" have very high value for raising grain production capacity, and their policy support mainly includes: in terms of basic production capacity, comprehensively carrying out the delineation of permanent basic farmland, coordinating the implementation of the national overall plan for high-standard farmland construction, implementing actions for the protection and improvement of arable land quality, and exploring the establishment of grain production functional zones; in terms of funding input, innovating investment and financing mechanisms, increasing funding input, concentrating efforts on accelerating the construction of a number of major water diversion projects, key water source projects, and backbone projects for river, lake, and reservoir governance, and implementing the same policies for land acquisition compensation and arable land requisition-compensation balance in water-saving and water-supply major water conservancy project construction as those for national major infrastructure projects such as railways; in terms of infrastructure, accelerating the continued construction, supporting facilities, and water-saving renovation of large and medium-sized irrigation districts, accelerating the promotion of modern irrigation district construction, and strengthening the construction of small-scale farmland water conservancy infrastructure; in terms of scientific and technological promotion, implementing the grain high-yield science and technology project and the science and technology demonstration for saline-alkali land improvement, deeply advancing the creation of high-yield grain and the tackling of key problems in green yield-increase models, implementing the plant protection construction project, and carrying out specialized unified prevention and control of crop diseases and pests. As a national major grain-producing area, Xiangyang has the conditions and strength to fully connect with and strive for the above four aspects of macro-policy support. According to comprehensive calculations by experts from the Municipal Agriculture Committee, Xiangyang can strive for 5-6 billion yuan annually in policy funds from the central and Hubei provincial governments for raising grain production capacity, and with active matching of local policy funds, funding input for further improving grain production conditions will surely be greatly guaranteed, and will surely have a huge positive effect on consolidating Xiangyang's status as a 10-billion-jin major grain-producing city.

(2) The construction of the Northern Hubei Water Resources Allocation Project will lay a solid foundation for raising Xiangyang's grain production capacity

The Northern Hubei Water Resources Allocation Project, which officially began construction in Xiangyang at the end of 2014, has been clearly assigned the work goal of “two years of preliminary work, three years of construction” by the provincial Party committee and provincial government. This project has been listed by the National Development and Reform Commission as one of the 172 major water-saving and water-supply projects nationwide that need priority implementation. It runs from northwest to southeast, traversing 7 counties (cities and districts), with the entire line using gravity-flow water conveyance. The total length of the water diversion route is 267 km, of which the section within Xiangyang is 148 km, accounting for 55% of the total length of the water diversion project; the total investment of the project is 16.5 billion yuan, with investment within Xiangyang exceeding 10 billion yuan, accounting for more than 60% of the total project investment; the average annual total water diversion volume of the project is 770 million cubic meters, of which the share allocated to Xiangyang is 461 million cubic meters, accounting for 60%; the total beneficiary population of the project is 4,818,100 people, of which Xiangyang's beneficiary population is 2,152,500 people, accounting for 45%; the project's irrigation beneficiary area is 3,635,000 mu, of which Xiangyang's beneficiary area is 2,210,000 mu, accounting for 61%. After the project is fully completed, it can not only ensure normal water supply in the Northern Hubei region year-round and solve the problems of drought resistance and drinking water, but also, along the line within Xiangyang, there are 25 reservoirs of medium size or above with a storage capacity of 594 million cubic meters; in the event of drought, all can be replenished and filled to ensure irrigation needs, thereby thoroughly solving the “dry pocket” problem in the “Three Norths” area. According to expert calculations, after the construction of the Northern Hubei Water Resources Allocation Project, 30%-40% of the cultivated land along the line within Xiangyang can be converted from dryland to paddy fields, which will increase the city's grain production capacity by a net of more than 1 billion jin.

(3) Comprehensive potential can still be deeply tapped, which will expand effective space for raising Xiangyang's grain production capacity

1. There is still potential to be tapped in basic grain output capacity. Xiangyang has abundant reserve arable land resources. By implementing comprehensive agricultural development and comprehensive management of low-yield fields, promoting high-standard farmland construction, and expanding the suitable sowing area for grain, the entire city can add 1.2 billion jin of grain production capacity. First, with the help of the Northern Hubei Water Resources Allocation Project, implementing the “Three Norths Water Sources” project (northern Laohekou, northern Xiangzhou, northern Zaoyang) in the Northern Hubei uplands, the entire city can add 1,755,000 mu of newly irrigated area, restore 877,800 mu of irrigation, and improve 3,350,000 mu of irrigated area, which can increase grain production capacity by 600 million jin. Second, implementing the Han River cascade canalization and regulation, beachland management, and levee cut-off and straightening, as well as reclaiming arable wasteland and abandoned land and restoring abandoned land, can add 350,000 mu of grain-suitable area and increase grain production capacity by 200 million jin. Third, by implementing field water conservancy projects, soil fertility projects, and standard farmland construction, and by adopting methods combining increased fertilization, soil improvement, water management, fine seeds, and fine methods, effectively improving the water-conservation, soil-conservation, and fertilizer-conservation capacity of cultivated land, improving basic agricultural production conditions and soil fertility, and ensuring that the area of medium- and low-yield fields improved through fertilization reaches 2 million mu, based on the calculation that each mu of cultivated land with soil fertility raised by one grade has the capacity to increase output by 200 jin, grain production capacity can be increased by about 400 million jin.

2. There is still potential to be tapped in giving play to the role of science and technology in increasing production. With the continuous strengthening of agricultural scientific and technological progress and policy support, there is still relatively large potential to raise the per-unit yield of grain crops. For example, the year with the highest average wheat yield in Xiangyang was 1997, at 764 jin, and the highest average rice yield was 1997, at 1,367 jin. By promoting fine varieties and integrating technologies to solve key technical problems, the goal of raising per-unit yield can be achieved. At present, the rice transplanting density throughout the city is generally low, and can be raised from the current 15,000 hills to 18,000-20,000 hills. According to preliminary calculations, by promoting fine varieties such as super rice on a large scale, supporting water-saving, fertilizer-saving, cost-saving and efficiency-increasing technologies, high-yield cultivation techniques, optimizing farming systems, and raising the multiple cropping index, the city's per-unit grain yield is expected to increase by 10%, which can add about 800 million jin of grain production capacity. In addition, by strengthening disease and pest control through new scientific and technological means and implementing “seizing grain from the mouths of pests,” reducing the current grain loss caused by diseases and pests from 5% to within 3% can increase grain by 160 million jin each year.

3. There is still potential to be tapped in raising the level of grain production mechanization. Surveys show that in 2014, Xiangyang's mechanical plowing level was 96.2%, the mechanical harvesting level for rice and wheat was 95.2%, the mechanical sowing level for corn was 60.3%, the mechanical rice transplanting level was 37.2%, and the mechanical sowing level for wheat was 62.4%, among which the mechanical drill sowing technology for wheat reached 43%, an increase of 5 percentage points over the previous year. Although the city's grain production mechanization level is generally at the forefront of the province, compared with China's major grain-producing areas, the mechanization level of rice and corn crops is relatively low, and there is still potential for increasing production and reducing losses. Based on the calculation that the future rice sowing area will be no less than 4 million mu and the mechanical transplanting and harvesting areas will each reach 50%-80%, a net increase in production capacity of 100 million jin can be achieved.