China's southern areas have been struck by drought several times in recent years. Relevant government departments have conducted studies on droughts and invested generously in drought alleviation. Despite these efforts, the fact that weather factors profoundly affect China's agricultural production remains unchanged, and this may potentially endanger the country's grain security and people's lives.

Xie Deti, Dean of the College of Resources and Environment of Southwest University based in Chongqing Municipality, is also a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). He said he believed the primary solution to the problem is for the government to increase its investment in agricultural water infrastructure. This is because, as farmers in many areas of China have even given up growing grain, it is impossible to rely on them to build irrigation infrastructure.

A viable investment structure for farming water facilities would be the Central Government and local governments share the burden of investing in building major irrigation ditches, while rural collectives and farmers raise money together to build branch and linking irrigation ditches between plots. Xie said such an investment structure would clarify different parties' responsibilities.

The good news is that the first document issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council this year stipulates that the Central Government will substantially enlarge the fund for small agricultural water facilities and spend more on reservoir consolidation projects in 2010.

Xie, who supported this policy, said he thinks supervision of government funds for agricultural irrigation facilities should be enhanced to avoid embezzlement, so investment could achieve its expected goals.

The ravages of drought have forced China's southern provinces to put the construction of anti-drought facilities higher on their governments' agendas. Secretary of CPC Yunnan Provincial Committee, Bai Enpei, said in early March that the drought in the province was exacerbated by the province's insufficient use of water resources. The province, whose total water resources rank third in the country, has a water use rate of a meager 6 percent.

"The drought warned us that we must improve our farmland water facilities," Bai said.

To address the problem, this year Yunnan is expected to start the construction of 100 major water supply projects and 1 million ponds in mountainous areas.

Guizhou Province, which has also suffered heavily from the drought, is determined to increase its effectively irrigated farmland areas by consolidating obsolete and dangerous reservoirs and building supporting facilities for irrigation projects.

Xie said the construction drive should place equal weight on the construction of large irrigation areas and small irrigation ditches between plots of land. Without the former facilities, there wouldn't be water supply sources for irrigation; without the latter, water could not be effectively transported to fields. He suggested that China should attach importance to the invention and application of water-saving irrigation technologies.

China should improve its legal system relating to water use facilities construction and emergency drought responses, so as to regulate investment, supervision and operation of water use facilities, as well as government compensation mechanisms for floods and droughts, Xie said.

China's Farmland Water Use Facilities

Of China's total farmland of 124 million hectares, only 57.8 million hectares, or 44 percent, can be irrigated, according to the Second National Agriculture Census released by the National Bureau of Statistics in February 2008.

Of the existing 87,085 reservoirs larger than 100,000 cubic meters, 86,258 were built between 1949 and 1979, and 827 were built after 1979. By the end of 2008, 37,000 reservoirs were obsolete and dangerous, accounting for 42.5 percent of the total, says the Ministry of Water Resources.