Many Places in China Hit by Agricultural Water Crisis, Farming Faces a Major Transformation

Well holes everywhere, yet not one yields water

Water resources are becoming increasingly scarce, and the water bottleneck constraining agricultural development is growing ever more prominent——during this year's severe droughts in many places, this problem has been exposed even more fully. In some areas, because the groundwater level keeps dropping, wells drilled only last year or the year before can no longer pump water to irrigate the cracked fields. One villager said helplessly that well holes dot the ground everywhere, yet not one yields water. This is both a helpless lament in the face of drought and a true portrayal of the agricultural water crisis.

Old wells have no water to pump, new wells are drilled ever deeper

Hua County is the top grain-producing county in Henan Province, the granary of the Central Plains. Because no large rivers flow through its territory and there are no controlled water storage projects on the surface, apart from limited water diverted from the Yellow River, agricultural irrigation and urban domestic life currently rely mainly on groundwater. Local groundwater resources are already facing severe challenges, and with this year's severe drought, the problem has become even more prominent.

He Dingquan, Party secretary of Minzhai Village in Baidaokou Town, Hua County, said that in a normal year cultivated land needs irrigation only once, but this year most plots in the whole village were watered 3 times. It is understood that Minzhai Village's 6,200 mu of cultivated land is equipped with about a hundred motor-pumped wells; after the severe drought struck, half of them were abandoned. Although the village drilled 31 new 70-meter deep wells in one go, they were still not enough. Villagers estimate that the whole village needs at least 70 deep wells of 70 meters.

With not enough new wells, they can only keep using the old ones, but the groundwater level has dropped severely and the old wells clearly yield insufficient water. Villager Zhao Wencai said: “The water from the old well spurts out little by little. Before, watering one mu of land took only about an hour; now it takes two days to water 3 mu, which wastes time and electricity.”

Weishi County in Kaifeng City is close to the Yellow River and has relatively good hydrological conditions, but due to arid climate and low rainfall in recent years, the groundwater level has also dropped noticeably. Li Hongchi, director of the Weishi County Water Conservancy Bureau, said that this year the groundwater level in Weishi County generally dropped by 2 to 3 meters, and in some areas by 5 to 10 meters.

In the mountainous areas of western Henan, because the terrain is higher, the groundwater level has dropped even more severely. Cheng Tianbiao, a major grain grower in Anxi Village, Jiaxian County, Pingdingshan, contracted 600 mu of land, and more than half of it had total crop failure this year. “The 70-meter well in the field can no longer pump water, and there is no water to irrigate the land,” Cheng Tianbiao said. To solve their drinking water problem, villagers of Laoshanxue Village in Anliang Town, Jiaxian County, pooled more than 10,000 yuan this year to drill a well more than 90 meters deep, but in less than 20 days it was nearly dry.

Niu Village is a lower-lying village in Anliang Town. In previous years, a 90-meter-deep motor-pumped well in the village could guarantee villagers' drinking water and farmland irrigation. Starting in June this year, the motor-pumped well was basically dry, and could pump water for only 20 minutes a day, with the water quality also turbid. Village Party secretary Du Guoqiang said: “Never mind pumping water to irrigate land - at the hardest times there was not even enough water to drink. Villagers could only go to other villages to haul water, sometimes traveling more than a dozen li.”

Wang Zimin, deputy director of the Jiaxian County Water Conservancy Bureau, said that because the groundwater level has dropped markedly, most villagers' own water wells have dried up. At present, newly drilled motor-pumped wells must reach about 200 meters to yield water, and in mountainous and hilly areas they may need to reach more than 300 meters. It is understood that this year, of Jiaxian County's 22 reservoirs, 21 have dried up; all 13 rivers have stopped flowing; of 8,353 irrigation wells, 3,700 have dried up; and the groundwater level has dropped by an average of more than 15 meters.

In recent years, Henan has suffered drought almost every year. In 2012, more than 20 million mu of autumn crops were affected by drought; in 2013, more than half of cities and counties suffered severe drought; and this year it suffered this severe drought again. “Continuous extraction of groundwater has already made the groundwater resource situation in some areas of Henan Province worrying. In western and southern Henan, the groundwater level has dropped substantially, and the decline in motor-pumped wells has exceeded 30 percent,” said Zhao Lianfeng, a supervisory commissioner of the Henan Provincial Flood Control and Drought Relief Office.

It is not only Henan. Hebei, Shandong, Inner Mongolia and other places face the same situation. In Hengshui, Hebei, 3 percent to 5 percent of motor-pumped wells are abandoned every year. Wells are drilled ever deeper, with the deepest already reaching six or seven hundred meters. Reporters found in interviews that old wells having no water to pump and new wells being drilled ever deeper has become a common phenomenon. More and more well holes, one right next to another, have almost become a “scene” in many well-irrigated farming areas.

Rivers and lakes dry up, no water available for diversion irrigation

“Investment in water conservancy construction must change. You cannot just drill wells whenever there is a drought. If the groundwater level keeps dropping and cannot be effectively replenished, a vicious cycle will form,” said Han Xiaowei, deputy director of the Hua County Water Affairs Bureau.

At present, in order to reduce groundwater extraction, Hua County has begun building surface water storage projects and is also increasing the volume of water diverted from the Yellow River. Han Xiaowei said that Hua County alone needs 300 million cubic meters of water for agriculture every year. Since 2008, Hua County has replenished groundwater sources by diverting water from the Yellow River, but because the Yellow River's water volume has decreased, the replenishment is very limited.

In recent years, as the Xiaolangdi Reservoir has regulated water and sediment, the Yellow River's water surface has dropped noticeably, and the diversion outlets from the Yellow River already need pumping. Han Xiaowei reported: “We are relatively far from the Yellow River. In dry years, we even need secondary pumping and irrigation to draw Yellow River water, and the volume is very limited. Both agricultural irrigation and water source replenishment are very difficult to achieve.”

The difficulty of diverting water from the Yellow River also exists in Kaifeng City, which is close to the Yellow River. In order to reduce groundwater consumption, Weishi County in Kaifeng City invests 750,000 yuan each year to increase the volume of Yellow River diversion water so as to ensure uninterrupted diversion throughout the year, but affected by the reduction in the Yellow River's water volume, the results are limited.

“Groundwater resources are extremely precious. In particular, the accumulation of deep groundwater cannot be restored in just a few years or decades. Therefore we increased Yellow River diversion in the hope of replenishing groundwater, but the Yellow River's water volume is decreasing and the diverted volume is very limited,” said Li Hongchi, director of the Weishi County Water Conservancy Bureau. It is understood that in recent years Kaifeng City's Yellow River diversion volume has consistently failed to meet demand. Because the Yellow River's water level has dropped, of the 4 Yellow River diversion outlets within Kaifeng City's territory, one already needs pumping.

Besides the Yellow River, rivers, lakes and reservoirs in many places are in the same situation. During this year's drought, the total water stored in reservoirs and ponds in Xiangyang, Hubei, was seriously insufficient. According to statistics, more than 240 rivers in the city, including the Chun River, Gun River, Xiao Yellow River, Heiqing River and Man River, stopped flowing or were at low water levels. In the Changshan area at the junction of Xiangyang, Zaoyang and Yicheng, surface water was insufficient, creating a situation in which there was a desire to fight the drought but no water with which to do so.

In Lutou Town, Zaoyang City, town Party secretary Liu Guoqiang said that the area has suffered drought for 5 consecutive years, and large and medium-sized reservoirs in its territory, including the Sha River and Ji River reservoirs, have all fallen below the safe dam-preservation water level, with no water available to release. Of 8 small reservoirs managed by the town, 6 have dried up, and of 646 ponds, 525 have dried up.

“Today's reservoirs hitting bottom and rivers stopping flow are the result of years of accumulation. Repeated droughts remind us that we must think about how to firmly build the water security line for grain production,” said Shi Haibo, a supervisory commissioner for flood control and drought relief of the Henan Provincial Department of Water Resources.

⟦NL> “We never imagined that water could not be drawn from the lake”

Jiangxi lies in a subtropical monsoon humid climate zone, with dense rivers and lakes within its territory, and is a veritable water-rich area in the south. But in recent years, Jiangxi, wearing the hat of a “water-rich area,” has also frequently suffered droughts, bringing great challenges to agricultural production.

In July 2011, which should have been the rainy season in the south, Jiangxi experienced a summer drought. At that time, in Yiji Village, Changbu Town, Anyi County, Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province, reporters saw large areas of rice paddies dried up, and in some fields cracks even 3 fingers wide appeared. “After the early rice suffered drought, the late rice suffered drought again - two droughts in one year, leaving us overwhelmed,” said Du Muhuo, a local major grain grower.

In Jiangxiang Town, Nanchang County, by the side of Poyang Lake, drought also occurred that year. The area relied entirely on drawing water from beside the lake and river, with not a single reservoir. Cao Hongfu, head of the Jiangxiang Town water station, told reporters that local farmland irrigation relied on the Gan River's water, and “we never imagined that water could not be drawn from the lake.” Of Jiangxiang Town's roughly 150,000 mu of late rice, about 100,000 mu suffered drought.

At the very start of the new year in 2012, news of drought came again from the Poyang Lake area: the water body area of Poyang Lake shrank to less than 200 square kilometers, less than one-twentieth of that in the high-water period, and the water level at the iconic hydrological station fell below 8 meters.

In 2013, drought struck Jiangxi again. Starting from July 16, Gao'an, Jiangxi, had continuous rainless days, and by mid-August more than 5,500 mu of paddy fields in the city lacked water.

In fact, as China's largest freshwater lake, Poyang Lake has frequently experienced seasonal drying up in recent years. During an interview in November last year, reporters saw that water plants in a number of lakeside townships in Yugan County, Poyang County and Duchang County all had varying degrees of difficulty drawing water, or even had no water to draw; in some rural areas along the lake, because the groundwater level was low, drinking wells and hand-pumped wells yielded seriously insufficient water, and many farmers' wells produced only enough water each day for 1 person to drink.

“Farming costs shot up all at once”

The shortage of water resources makes irrigation more difficult and more costly, and farmers are investing more and more in watering.

Not long ago, reporters met Niu Xueyin, who was watering in the fields in Xihao Village, Yuanshi County, Hebei Province. She told reporters that the village uses well water for irrigation, the water level is low, and many people use it, so watering one mu of land takes 5 to 6 hours.

Yao Fengjuan of Nanyaojiazhuang, Zhao County, Shijiazhuang City, said that farming and watering currently require too much investment. According to her, their village also uses wells to irrigate land, and the wells do not yield much water. “Farming costs shot up all at once. Watering one mu of wheat costs about 100 yuan.”

In Gaomi, Shandong, major grain grower Wang Cuifen has also experienced water being as precious as oil. “The drought in the first half of this year was too severe. Last year wheat yielded 1,100 jin to 1,200 jin per mu; this year only 700 jin to 800 jin. The impact is too great. Without water, farming cannot be done.” Wang Cuifen said helplessly that this year's wheat planting “lost a lot of money” because of the drought.

Wang Cuifen said she had also drilled several wells. Now wells are drilled more than 100 meters deep, very deep, whereas before they were at most only a few dozen meters. As the depth increases, the cost rises quite noticeably, with one well costing more than 20,000 yuan. Because the water is not very abundant, electricity costs are also greatly increased.

Every morning at 5 o'clock, Wang Cuifen, who has farmed for nearly 20 years, arrives at the fields on time to smell the “scent of the soil.” Wang Cuifen hopes the government can increase subsidies to promote water-saving, energy-saving and efficient sprinkler irrigation equipment, so that more major grain growers can use this good equipment and save more water resources. In addition, she has joined with other major grain growers and plans to establish a water-saving irrigation association, “first because agriculture's water shortage is now very severe, and second to jointly promote the concept of water conservation. Dozens of people have already expressed interest in joining.”

“I've been thinking all along that equipment and labor can be bought with more money, but if water resources are wasted, no amount of money can buy them back. Saving water is not only for ourselves, but also for future generations,” Wang Cuifen said.