Strategic Research On The Development Of The Water-saving Agriculture In Northwest China

The Northwest region includes provinces of Xinjiang, Qinghai, Ningxia, Gansu, Shaanxi and the western parts of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The whole area covers 3,600,000km2, which accounts for 37.5% of the national land area. The natural environment and water resource condition in the Northwest is particular, which determined the extremely important roles water plays in the development of the socio-economy and the constructions of ecological environment. Developing water-saving agriculture insures the sustainable development of the agriculture, the economics and the society of the Northwest.This thesis sets about from the water resource of the Northwest of our country, and analyzes its present characteristics and its current situation of development and utilization. Precipitation of this area is rare, but evaporation here is strong, Regional maldistribution of the water and soil resource, and the conspicuous imbalance between supply and demand are all the problems existing there. On the other hand, the development and utilization of water resource is unreasonable, and the agricultural utilization ratio of water is low, especially the irrigation of the farmland, which is only about 0.3~0.4. Besides, waste is a serious problem. In developing water-saving agriculture, various problems emerge: mistaken ideas on realization of the water-saving, poor irrigation technique of water-saving, unmatched set of the project facilities which are aging and in bad repair in irrigated area, insufficient fund input to the water-saving, low water price of agricultural irrigation, imperfect management system of water-saving, incomplete agricultural policy, irrational agricultural production structure, low quality apparatus of water-saving, low industrialization intensity.To develop water-saving agriculture according to local conditions, the water-saving agriculture areas of the Northwest can be divided into 5 first-class typical areas which are Inner Mongolia district, Northwest loess plateau district, hillock basin area of Sichuan and Shaanxi, Northwest inland district, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau District and 13 second-class typical areas. In addition, this thesis carries on research separately on natural resources state and water-saving current situation of agriculture in different district, points out existing problems about water-saving agriculture in the districts, and emphatically discusses the district-suitable strategic measures of agricultural water-saving. The development strategy of the water-saving agriculture in the Northwest are proposed: (1) Overall arrangement, rational arrangement, and scientific plan-making about the water-saving agriculture development in the Northwest. (2) Improve the water-saving irrigation level, advance the construction of high-efficiency irrigation agriculture in an all-round way. (3) Strengthen the water-saving agriculture construction of the dry farmland; implement the water-saving agriculture development strategy which combines the water and drought. (4) Build up and improve the management system of the water-saving agriculture, strengthen management. (5) Build up and perfect the guarantee measures of water-saving agriculture development, consummate services.At last, this thesis analyzes the supply-demand developing state and the capacity of water resource, thinking that the agricultural water-saving in the Northwest has very great potentiality. Through economizing and efficiently utilizing water, sustainable utilization of the water resource can be realized. In addition, it discusses the developing trend of the water-saving agriculture in the Northwest and points out several questions needing to be paid attention to during the water-saving project.