免费日韩片_欧美成人精品一区二区男人小说_国产乱码一区二区三区四区_国产精品国产三级国产aⅴ入口_成人看的污污超级黄网站免费_欧美一级在线免费观看_成人午夜免费无码福利片_国产乱人伦偷精品视频色欲_aaa少妇高潮大片免费看_国产精品1234_亚洲精品国产suv一区88_中文字字幕在线中文无码_精品亚洲区_午夜九九九_国产av国片精品jk制服丝袜_色综合亚洲_亚洲成av人片无码bt种子下载_欧美色就色_精品少妇的一区二区三区四区_男人用嘴添女人下身免费视频

National

Regional

Taiwan, HK, Macao

Special Coverage

Focus

Society

Profiles

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."

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (Front R) inspects the growth of wheat at Yangbei Village of Fanggang Township in Yuzhou City, central China's Henan Province, February 7, 2009. [Xinhua]

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.

Related readings: Fighting drought top priority: Wen Wen urges priority on drought relief Another $12.69b earmarked for relief Top emergency declared for drought

Her native Pingdingshan city is rich in black (coal), white (salt) and blue (water) resources. As the dry spell spread over town, so did relief efforts by local cadres and residents. With widespread fog since early Saturday, meteorological reports of a rainfall that evening and local preparation of artificial precipitation, it was only natural for the villager to assume all was going to be well.

But when Wang woke up with no sight of rain on Sunday outside her house, she realized the time to irrigate the fields was now or never.

"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."

While slight showers and artificial precipitation brought an average of 0.5 mm of rainfall to 17 counties and cities in Henan yesterday, Pingdingshan received virtually no rain at all.

"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.

   Previous page 1 2 Next Page  

   Previous page 1 2 Next Page