Agricultural water security zoning and developmental countermeasures in China

Although water resources is the basis of food security, agricultural water shortage is rampant in China. In view of regional differences in agricultural water use in the country, 10 indicators were selected and adopted for zoning of agricultural water consumption. Ten indicators belong to four groups (the conditions of water resources, the level of economic development, the state of agricultural production, and the features of agricultural water use) were selected, and cluster analysis used to divide agricultural water consumption zones with 2013 as the base year. The results indicated that China was divided in 8 zones of agricultural water consumption based on administrative units at provincial level. The first zone included Jiangxi, Hunan and Hubei Provinces, where the proportions of total agricultural water use (TAWU) and grain production in the country were 13.3% and 12.5%, respectively. The second zone included Guizhou, Yunnan, Anhui, Sichuan, Chongqing and Guangxi Provinces (City or Autonomous Region), where TAWU and grain production were 23.6% and 20.3%, respectively. The third zone covered Hainan Province for which the TAWU and grain production were 0.9% and 0.3%, respectively. Then the forth zone included Shandong, Henan, Hebei, Liaoning, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces with a combined agricultural output accounting for 33.7% of the total agricultural output of the country and accounted for 32.4% of the China’s total grain production. However, it had only 6.8% of the total amount of water and used only 19.2% water resources of the country. The fifth zone included Jilin, Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia Provinces (Autonomous Region), accounting for 20.5% of the country’s total grain production, 6.9% of its total water amount and 12.0% of the TAWU. The sixth zone covered Ningxia, Xinjiang, Tibet and Qinghai, accounting respectively for 16.2% and 3.2% of the country’s TAWU and grain production. The seventh zone included Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces, with 19.5% and 10.2% of China’s TAWU and grain production, respectively. The eighth zone included Tianjin, Shanghai, Beijing, etc., which accounted for 1.1% and 0.6% of the China’s TAWU and grain production, respectively. As the agricultural water use and grain production in the fourth and fifth zones accounted respectively for 31.2% and 52.9% of the country’s total, there was need to treat the two zones with a specific concern in terms of agricultural water management. Among the countermeasures to agricultural water use put forward for the zones, water saving was important for the first zone, improved irrigation water use coefficient for the second zone, increased effective irrigation area in the third zone, and improved total water resources through water transfer from other basins and increased water-saving potential inside the basins for forth zone. There was the need to increase the degree of water assurance in the fifth zone, to focus on water resources protection and conservation in the sixth zone, and to promote water utilization efficiency in the seventh and eighth zones. The paper therefore solidly laid the scientific basis for sustainable utilization of water resources in the whole of China.