CHINA> National
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Farmers battling worst drought in decades
By Hu Yinan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-02-09 14:06 PINGDINGSHAN, Henan -- Even though Wang Meilian's wheat field has had no water for more than 110 days, she always managed to stay calm. "I thought the rain would come eventually," the 45-year-old said. "There's always some rain."
Although her home province of Henan is suffering the worst drought in half a century with a 90 percent drop in average rainfall since last November, Wang said she was never too afraid.
"We started at 6 a.m.," she said in the winter chill, watching her 15-year-old son taking his turn at watering their field with a water pipe. "The rain would've saved us a lot of effort. But it hasn't been of much help, and forecasts are now saying it's going to be sunny again from tomorrow on. "It's not that we just wanted to wait for the rain," she continued. "It was too cold these past few months. And since drought relief work started, it's been difficult to borrow water pumps."
"About half of our wheat will be lost this year no matter what we do," local water resources chief Dong Fagen told China Daily. "And to be very frank, we can only manage to irrigate at best 2 million mu (133,333 hectares) of Pingdingshan's total 3.06 million mu (204,000 hectares) of farmland. "The rest is up to Mother Nature," he said. |