Ministry of Water Resources will promote water rights trading and government buyback mechanism throughout the country

At a news conference held by the Information Office of the State Council, Li Guoying, vice minister of water resources, introduced the situation of water-saving irrigation in China, saying that water rights trading and government buyback mechanisms would be promoted across the country to make farmers more profitable in water conservation.

Li Guoying said that the water-saving trading mechanism and the government buyback mechanism are an incentive mechanism to encourage farmland irrigation to save water. First of all, give farmers the right to use water to him, in the past, there is no right to share water, cauldron water, use as much as you want, inexhaustible, inexhaustible. Now the Ministry of Water Resources wants to distribute the water rights of agricultural water to irrigation areas, which will then be allocated to water users. Under this premise, total quantity control should be implemented.

Li Guoying gave an example to illustrate that, for example, if the water consumption per mu of cultivated land is capped by only 300 cubic meters allocated to farmers, under such circumstances, if the masses have made reforms in irrigation methods and adopted high-efficiency and water-saving irrigation methods, 300 square meters may not be used. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Water Resources, the average water consumption of flood irrigation is 400 square meters per mu of land. If sprinkler irrigation is used to save half, it will become 200 square meters. If drip irrigation is used to save another half, it will become 100 square meters. After the adoption of efficient and water-saving irrigation, the water rights originally allocated to farmers will not be used up. What should I do if I can't finish it? In order to encourage him and enable farmers to make profits and get more benefits in water saving, we should establish a trading mechanism for rural water rights, to whom farmers can sell them. Perhaps your neighboring user, due to the circulation of land and the expansion of the scale of his family, he did not have enough water originally allocated to him, and he asked the government for it again. He could only buy this part of the use right from the water saved by neighboring farmers. The two sides can negotiate the price with each other. This is the transaction mechanism.

Li Guoying said that if no one wants the water saved, the government makes up, and the government establishes a buyback mechanism to sell water rights to farmers, such as 50 cents for a party of water, farmers save 10% and cannot sell it, and the government comes forward to buy it back. Fifty cents is bought back, plus one penny, which reflects the government's praise for water conservation and an incentive. Urge farmers to consciously adopt high-efficiency and water-saving irrigation methods in the process of irrigation, not only increase grain output in the process of water-saving irrigation, but also obtain a new income from the water saved. After the establishment of such a mechanism, policies will promote the adoption of new irrigation technologies.

Li Guoying said that the government buyback mechanism has been implemented in some parts of the country, such as in the Zhangye area of the Heihe River Basin in Gansu Province, where farmers have started trading with water tickets. For example, in some irrigation districts in Hunan, the government's buyback mechanism has been established, and practice has proved to have achieved very good results. Therefore, the next step of the Ministry of Water Resources is to promote this mechanism on a larger scale throughout the country.