China wheat harvest withers in drought
By Michael Wines QIAOBEI, China: In this tiny hamlet in northern China’s wheat belt, Zheng Songxian scrapes out a living growing winter wheat on a vest-pocket plot, an eighth of a hectare carved out of a rocky hillside. One might think he would greet the chance this winter to till new land as cause for celebration. He does not. The new land he was offered normally lies under more than 6 meters, or 20 feet, of water, part of the Luhun Reservoir in northwestern Henan Province. But this winter, Luhun has lost most of its water to northern China’s worst drought in at least 50 years. And what was once lake bottom has become just another field of winter wheat, stunted for want of rain. Zheng, 50, stood in his field, which measures barely a third of an acre, on a recent winter day, a shrunken wheat plant freshly pulled from the earth in one hand. "I think I’m going to lose at least a third of my harvest this year," he said. "If we don’t get rain before May, I won’t be able to harvest anything." Northern China is dry in the best of times. But this long rainless stretch has underscored the urgency of water problems in a region that grows three-fifths of China’s crops and houses more than two-fifths of its people. Water supplies have been drying up for decades, the result of pervasive overuse and waste. Underground aquifers have been so depleted that, in some farming regions, wells probe more than 800 meters deep before striking water. The latest drought is crippling not only the country’s best wheat farmland but also the wells that provide clean water to industry and to millions of people. …
