Drip Irrigation Investment in China
With a chronic shortage of water plaguing much of China’s north and northwest regions, investment in water technologies like drip irrigation are gaining the attention of local officials who are looking to support their regions.
Previously used in Israel and other areas where access to water is severly limitied, the early tests of Xinjiang’s drip irrigation appear to be bearing fruit:
In the Xinjiang region, replacing flood irrigation with drip irrigation on just 5,000 acres of cotton farmland has the potential to reduce water use by 22 percent, save 6 million liters (1.6 million U.S. gallons) a year, increase cultivable area by 5 percent by eliminating ditches, reduce chemical fertilizers by 10 percent, and improve yield by 30 percent, according to the report.
The key going forward will be central party recognition that this technology has a wider application in China, and through investment in this technology China can reduce the amount of water needed to raise its crops.
One reason that drip irrigation in China is so “cost-effective” is that Chinese companies have copied the patented plastic drip apparatus, developed by Israeli and European companies, and sell these copies domestically without paying the royalties to the inventors….
Drip irrigation has its application, but spray irrigation is much faster to set up, has efficiency not much less than drip, and is tremendously flexible, with irrigation machines able to be moved about by tractor and shared between farms with different production cycles…
The belief amongst Chinese agronomists that spray irrigation cannot be used on flowering crops, and therefore either flood or drip irrigation must be used on cotton or corn, has been demonstrated worldwide to be a mistaken belief, for many decades in some cases.