Water shortages and contamination problems in China have become widespread in recent years amid the industrialization and urbanization drive. Tuesday is World Water Day, and its also when spring irrigation starts in many parts of the country. We went to central China's Henan province to see how the local government is helping farmers modernize their irrigation methods, to get the most out of every drop of water.
At the swipe of a card, Shang Shuiwang's centre-pivot sprinkler starts to water his wheat on his 12-hectare of farmland.
This 200-meters long computer-controlled sprinkler means Shang no longer needs to worry about hiring people to do the job for this year's spring farming.
"For many years, we used the traditional flood irrigation. It wasted a lot of water and it could be only used on very small area of farmland. The local government installed the sprinkler system for me for free. It has a sensor that reads the soil moisture and then can decide how much water to sprinkle," said Shang.
Henan is China's most populous province. It's known for its huge agricultural output. The Yellow River runs through the province, but water supplies are becoming more erratic every year.
In 2013, the province launched a water-saving irrigation project, adopting multiple modernized irrigation methods on over 3000 hectare of farmland in Xuchang City. Shang's farmland is included.
"We helped them transfer the farmland and build more large-scale farms. At the same time we upgraded their irrigation facilities, like various kinds of sprinkler and drip irrigation. And we also built a real-time information system to monitor everything on these 3000-hectare farmland including soil moisture, weather," said Sun Bin, deputy director of Xuchang Irrigation Experiment Station.
"The advanced irrigation facilities can only be used on large-scale fields. For instance, the smallest fixed sprinklers require at least a 20-meter width of land. If the field is too small, it's impossible to install the system. So we should encourage farm cooperatives by accelerating rural land transfers and help establish bigger and more specialized farming units. Then our goal of water-saving irrigation can be reached," said Wu Jicheng, Henan Provincial Academy of Agriculture.
Here in China, agriculture consumes a vast amount of ground and surface water. But modernizing irrigation practices can help to lower the water demand, while still boosting crop yields.
This January, the "Number One Central Document" said that China plans to make water use in agriculture more efficient with measures such as tiered pricing, wider use of drought-tolerant crops and rewards for water conservation.
China faces a predicament over water. The water resources are just 27 percent of the global average and are unevenly distributed. Irrigation methods ARE being upgraded, but it's also time for ALL of us to rethink our daily water use and try to save as much as we can.
