China's Other Looming Choke Point: Food Production

By Keith Schneider, Circle of Blue

Yellow River Basin is center of contest over water, energy and agriculture.

YINCHUAN, China--Even along the eastern bank of the Yellow River, which irrigates 402,000 hectares (993,000 acres) of farmland north of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region's provincial capital, there is still no mistaking the smell of dry earth and diesel fuel, the abiding scents of a desert province that is also among China's most efficient grain producers.

Ningxia farmers have relied on the Yellow River since 221 BCE, when Qin Dynasty engineers clawed narrow trenches from the sand, introducing some the first instances of irrigated agriculture on earth. Despite persistent droughts, in each of the last five years irrigation has made it possible for annual harvests to increase by an average of 100,000 metric tons.

_{Workers spread manure by hand in a dry field near Yinchuan in Ningxia, where farmers have relied on the Yellow River since 221 BCE, when Qin Dynasty engineers clawed narrow trenches from the sand, introducing some the first instances of irrigated agriculture on earth. Photo: © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue}

The 2010 harvest of 3.5 million metric tons was nearly double what it was in 1990. The 3.9 million people who live and work on Ningxia's 1.2 million farms, most no larger than three-quarters of a hectare (1.6 acres), produce the highest yields of rice and corn in the nine-province Yellow River Basin, according to central government crop statistics.

In sum, the farm productivity of this small northern China region -- about the same size as West Virginia and located 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) to the west of the Bohai Sea -- reflects the major shifts in geography and cultivation practices over the last generation that have made China both self-sufficient in food production and the largest grain grower in the world.

_{A field in the Anlong Organic Farm - one of China's first organic farms located in Sichuan Province near Chengdu - is no larger than the average American front lawn. Photo: © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue}

Yet Chinese farm officials here and academic authorities in Beijing are becoming increasingly concerned that China does not have enough water, good land and energy to sustain its agricultural prowess. As Circle of Blue and the China Environment Forum have reported in the Choke Point: China series, momentous competing trends -- rising energy demand, accelerating modernization and diminishing freshwater resources -- are putting the country's energy production and security at risk.

The very same trends also threaten China's farm productivity. Last year, the national coal sector and the farm sector together made up 85 percent of the 599 billion cubic meters (158 trillion gallons) of water used in China. Coal already uses 138 billion cubic meters (36.5 trillion gallons), or 23 percent of the nation's freshwater reserves, and by 2020, according to government estimates, that number will increase to 188 billion cubic meters (49.7 trillion gallons), making up 28 percent of the nation's total water use.

Meanwhile, agricultural water use -- 371 billion cubic meters in 2010, or 62 percent of total use -- is expected to drop to 360 billion cubic meters (95.1 trillion gallons), or 54 percent of the 670 billion cubic meters (177 trillion gallons) that China is expected to use in 2020.

Drought in northern China is already reducing spring wheat harvests and starting to limit coal production, thus accelerating the rising prices for food and energy and putting more inflationary pressure on the entire economy.

A second severe drought in the Yangtze River Basin could limit grain production in southern China, too. Some 870,000 hectares (2.15 million acres) of farmland has been affected in Hubei Province -- one of China's largest rice producers -- and about 400,000 people have no ready supply of drinking water.

Read more at Circle of Blue.

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