Lack of an overall plan to solve the agricultural water crisis

The over-exploitation of groundwater for many years has made the North China Plain, as the main grain producing area in China, facing the crisis of "water shortage". On the one hand, it is the increasing scarcity of precious water, on the other hand, it is the realistic pressure to ensure the safety of Chinese people's "grain bags". As a "big consumer" of water resources, how should agriculture effectively alleviate the shortage of water resources in the North China Plain? At the launching meeting of the collaborative innovation action on water conservation and grain conservation in North China held a few days ago, more than 260 experts from many scientific research institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences gathered and put forward countermeasures.

Overexploiting groundwater to produce grain is like a "subprime crisis".

The North China Plain is the main agricultural producing area in China. Authoritative data show that in 2013, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region produced 6.1% of the country's grain, 11.9% of vegetables, 9.4% of fruits, 6.4% of meat, 13.3% of eggs and 15.8% of milk on 5.7% of arable land. It can be seen that its strategic position in ensuring food security is very important.

"paradoxically, the per capita water resources in North China is less than 200 cubic meters, which is the least per capita water resources in the country!" Wang Qingshuo, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Environment and Sustainable Development of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told reporters that the water consumption of the current wheat-corn double cropping system and growing vegetables and fruits in North China is greater than 800mm every year, but the precipitation is only 500mm~600mm, and there is a large gap in water use. Therefore, the intensive development of agriculture has to be at the expense of groundwater exploitation, and the annual over-exploitation of groundwater in the North China Plain is more than 10 billion cubic meters.

The long-term overexploitation of groundwater leads to the gradual expansion of the groundwater funnel area. At present, the area of groundwater overexploitation in Hebei Province is more than 67000 square kilometers, accounting for more than 90% of the plain area. Overexploitation of groundwater not only scraps a large number of motor wells and increases the cost of agricultural production, but also leads to problems such as land subsidence, ground fissures and seawater backflow. The cost of ecological environment is heavy, and the crisis of water resources is coming.

As the American water resources researcher Post said in 2008, "using groundwater in geological history to produce grain is like a 'subprime mortgage crisis' in grain production, and the resulting grain production 'bubble' will become bigger and bigger." and finally burst. "

Exploring the substitution of efficiency for expansion under "reducing Water and increasing Grain"

"by 2030, China's population will reach 1.6 billion, when the per capita share of water resources will be only 1730 cubic meters, which is 300 cubic meters less than the current 2000 cubic meters, but the population is still growing. the demand for grain is increasing, and the contradiction of 'reducing water and increasing grain' will become more and more prominent." In the face of the realistic pressure of food rations, Chen Mengshan, secretary of the party group of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, felt worried.

"Water shortage has become a bottleneck in China's agricultural development, and a breakthrough must depend on science and technology." As the "national team" of agricultural science and technology, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in conjunction with China Agricultural University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other scientific research forces, takes improving the utilization rate of water resources as the core, taking the efficient water use of major crops such as wheat, corn, vegetables and regional overall solutions as the main line, starting with the research on water-saving technology, production measures and policy mechanism, to carry out coordinated research on efficient water use and groundwater protection in intensive agricultural areas of North China. And put this project into one of the three regional key projects of the scientific and technological innovation project.

What is the carrying capacity of water resources in each region of the North China Plain? How to improve the water use of crops? How to realize the economic compensation for water saving of farmers? "if you want to replace scale expansion with efficiency, these scientific problems cannot be bypassed and must be broken one by one." Wang Qingsuo said.

"show it to the farmers and take them to work."

The reporter noted that the primary scientific research goal of this collaborative innovation campaign is not the publication of papers and patents, but more than 10 sets of irrigation water-saving, dry farming, and planting system adjustment programs. At the same time, the project will set up technology integration demonstration sites in 15 major grain producing areas in the North China Plain, such as Shunyi, Hengshui, and Dezhou, and scientists will also go to the fields to teach grain water-saving and water-saving plans to major grain growers.

"for a long time, there has been a lot of scientific and technological research on agricultural water conservation, but it is relatively scattered, fragmented and repeated, and there is no technology integration, and there is a lack of technology landing." Chen Mengshan said: only with a high position and starting with the combination of multi-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary scholars in the upper, middle and lower reaches of agriculture can we give operable and effective scientific research results. "the mission of agricultural experts should be to 'show farmers and lead them to work.'"

"for a long time, many agricultural technologies still lack a 'sense of existence' among farmers." Liu Yan, deputy director of the Science and Education Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that what farmers need most is an overall solution to the major problems of real production. How to get the scientific research results out of the laboratory to the field is a more difficult scientific research project for agricultural scientists.