Beneath a cloudless blue sky, the withered wheat grass barely 2 inches high slumped over gray, parched ground in Wei Liuding's field.

A mere spark would set the field alight at this time of the year when the field should be green.

"I haven't seen such a severe drought in my life," said the 50-year-old farmer, dust curling around his feet.

At Wei's farm in Zhongmu County, Henan Province, the water in the well "has become lower and lower since November," he said. "Now I can only get water from seventy or eighty meters down."

If the wheat grass doesn't get enough water, Wei won't have a harvest this summer. He will not be alone.

Water comes to the fore

Including Wei's land, 155 million mu (10.33 million hectares) of crops had been affected by drought nationwide as of Thursday, of which northern wheat crops accounted for 95 percent, the Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said.

About 43 percent of China's wheat is at risk.

The headquarters raised the drought emergency class on Thursday from Level II to Level I, the highest, in response to the worst drought to hit northern China in half a century.

In the Yellow River region, the drought alert was raised to red Friday, also the most severe level.

The China Meteorological Administration said on Thursday that the northern drought would persist through March and might even worsen.

Duan Aiming, the head of the Irrigation Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences, said the drought had "sounded an alarm" about water resources in northern China.

"As the need for water for domestic and industrial use is rising, water for irrigation is under more stress," said Duan.

Data from the Development Research Center of the State Council showed northern China produces 65 percent of the nation's crops but has only 35 percent of the water. Further, water resources in the region have contracted in recent years.

According to the National Population and Family Planning Commission, China's population will reach 1.5 billion by 2030. In other words, 100 million more tonnes of crops will need to be produced to feed another 200 million mouths. Northern China, with relatively abundant arable land, will remain under pressure.

"This means we can no longer rely on the weather," said Ke Bingsheng, president of China Agricultural University. "To deal with climate abnormalities, a growing water shortage, and the threat to food security, we must speed the use of farming and irrigation methods that save water."

Conservation becomes bottleneck

Water from white hoses sprayed across the green wheat field in Qianliu Village, Dezhou City, Shandong, where per capita water resources are only 10 percent of the national level and more than 4 million mu of wheat are lost to drought every year.

"It took me ten hours to water the field from the well, but now I only spend five or six hours," said villager Zhang Shulin. Spraying the field also saves 40 percent of the water he needs, by reducing permeability and evaporation.

In Wangjinghe Village, Lingcheng Town in Dezhou, farmers use drip irrigation to save the village 100,000 cubic meters of water per year.

On average, widely used low-water irrigation facilities in Dezhou cut the city's agricultural water use 30 percent and increase crop yields 20 percent.

Although water-saving measures are used in northern China, many mature technologies aren't popular because of the high cost and low awareness of saving water, said Yu Fuliang, head of the Research Center for Water Resources, the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research.

According to the Ministry of Water Resources, only 47 percent of China's nearly 1.83 billion mu farmland can be irrigated. The rest must rely on precipitation.

Although water supplies are tight, the utilization ratio of irrigation water in China is 45 percent on average, far below the world average of 70 percent, said Xu Xiaoqing, deputy chief of the State Council's Department of Agriculture.

"The farmland affected by drought in our country is about 300 million to 400 million mu every year. Only with practical water-saving irrigation methods can we break the bottleneck of agriculture development," said Xu.

Change takes time

The National Framework for Medium- to Long-Term Food Security, issued in November, stressed the development of water-saving agriculture. It also proposed raising the utilization ratio of irrigation water to 50 percent by 2010 and 55 percent by 2020.

Subsequently, in the first document of the year issued jointly by the State Council and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Sunday, authorities were urged to increase investment in water-saving irrigation and expand high-efficiency irrigation skills.

Chen Xiwen, director of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Rural Work, said: "The central government emphasized water-saving agriculture. We have been making and issuing relevant policies and measures."

But Chen said developing a whole new agriculture system is a long-term project that requires both abundant investment and cooperation by the government, farmers and consumers.

(Xinhua News Agency February 7, 2009)