Actively deal with the impact of climate change on China's agricultural production

In the context of global warming, the frequency and intensity of extreme drought events are increasing, and China's agricultural production is increasingly affected by extreme drought events. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that from the 1950s to the first decade of this century, the disaster area of crops in China doubled, and the disaster area increased by 2.8 times. In the same period, the severity of the disaster increased significantly, and the disaster rate in the affected area increased from 32% to 58%. In addition, the impact of extreme drought events has also expanded from the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the 1950s to the vast areas of northeast, northwest inland and southwest at present. Improving the ability of agriculture to adapt to climate change is an important part of the national overall plan to adapt to climate change, and it is very important to ensure China's food security.

Under the auspices of the Agricultural Policy Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Henan Agricultural University, Jiangxi Agricultural University and North China Institute of Water Conservancy and Hydropower participated in the project "Research on Climate change Water Resources and their adaptability in North China Plain and Poyang Lake region" (2012-2015). A few days ago, combined with this project, the Agricultural Policy Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences organized a seminar on "Research on Climate change Water Resources and their adaptability" to introduce the relevant research results.

The study of the project shows that by 2030, runoff from the six major northern basins (Songhua River, Liaohe River, Huaihe River, Haihe River, Yellow River and Northwest Inland Basin) tends to decrease, and agricultural water consumption in all basins shows an upward trend. it also includes the Yangtze River basin, the Pearl River basin, the southeast and southwest basins. "without considering climate change and the benefits of water resources utilization, the gap between water supply and demand in all basins will be more obvious by 2030, and climate change will further aggravate the gap between supply and demand of water resources in many basins." Huang Ji, director and chief scientist of the Agricultural Policy Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

According to the model, the research group predicts that under the condition of keeping the total sown area unchanged, by 2030, the irrigated area of the Yellow River basin will decrease by 0.18%, the corresponding rain-fed area will increase by 0.18%, and the crop yield and total yield will both decrease by 1.16%.

In addition, the study also shows that there are great differences in the adaptability of farmers with different incomes to climate change. Low-income farmers are more vulnerable to extreme weather, resulting in a higher proportion of yield reduction, with crop damage accounting for 21 per cent of household property in the low-income group, compared with only 2 per cent in the high-income group. When dealing with the dry climate, the farmers in the high-income group are more likely to adopt engineering measures, while the low-income farmers are more likely to use drought-resistant varieties.

At the government level, in addition to the provision of early warning information, the support of poor counties in terms of financial, technical and material policies is much lower than that of non-poor counties. Only 28% of villages in poor counties can get support, far less than 47% in non-poor counties. The research group suggests that we should attach great importance to the ability of poor farmers to adapt to climate change and incorporate it into the national climate change adaptation and anti-poverty planning, in order to improve China's overall plan to adapt to climate change and promote the realization of the goal of lifting the rural poor out of poverty as scheduled by 2020.

The research group pointed out that although climate change has little impact on the whole country, it will aggravate the shortage of water resources in the Yellow River, Haihe River, Liaohe River and Huaihe River basins, and adversely affect the reliability of agricultural water supply. It is suggested that the problem of water resources in the northern region should be specifically included in the overall plan to deal with and adapt to international climate change, and that the reliability of agricultural water supply should be taken as a priority in dealing with climate change and water resources shortage.

In order to improve the ability of the agricultural sector to adapt to extreme arid climate, the research group also suggested: first of all, the government should further increase investment in irrigation and water conservancy facilities, and the north should pay special attention to the construction of irrigation and water conservancy facilities with multiple water sources; the key in the south is to give further play to the drought relief effectiveness of existing water conservancy projects (especially small and medium-sized water conservancy projects). Secondly, make clear the financial support policy, establish and improve the drought early warning information system, and strengthen the effective release of drought early warning information. Not only need to use a variety of channels (such as mobile phone text messages, media and government notices, etc.) to disseminate information, but also it is best to provide early warning information before and after disasters, mainly to provide prevention information and disaster relief guidance information after disasters. Third, expand the popularity of drought management and service policies in terms of technology, materials or funds, and increase support. The survey found that drought management services in terms of technology, materials and funds are one of the effective policies to promote farmers to take adaptive measures, but the current popularity is very low. Therefore, in order to improve the adaptability of farmers to extreme drought events, the country urgently needs to effectively implement drought management service support in terms of technology, materials and funds, so as to improve the popularity of this service policy as much as possible. so that more farmers can get the support of this policy, so as to improve their adaptability.