As part of the plan, the government plans to bring water-saving, efficient irrigation to approximately half of its existing effectively irrigated farmland during the 10th Five-Year Plan period (2001-05), officials with the ministry of water resources said Monday.

During the period, unrealistically low prices of irrigation water are expected to be increased to actual cost instead of the 50 to 65 percent of cost being charged at present.

"The present low pricing works against the governments advocacy of water conservation,'' many experts say.

They were invited by the Ministry of Water Resources to offer better ideas and solutions to the major issues facing the future development of China's water-efficient agriculture.

One of the most serious issues, they said, is that only about 40 percent of the country's irrigation water is being used effectively while the rest is being wasted because of poor ditches and antiquated and outdated irrigation facilities,with serious loss of water through evaporation and percolation into the ground.

China is one of the 13 countries in the world facing serious scarcity of water resources. The country's per capita water resources' share is only a quarter of the world's average level, the experts said.

To maintain sustainable development of the economy, particularly, agriculture, in this century, the government hopes it can supply more water to improve ecological environment while not increasing the consumption of water for irrigation, which consumes over 70 percent of China's total water supply today.

China has to feed 1.3 billion population or 22 percent of the world's total with only 10 percent of the world's arable land.

Of China's existing 130 million hectares of cultivated land, 53 million hectares, or 40 percent, are now irrigated, of which, only 5 percent have adopted modern water-saving irrigation techniques such as spray and drip irrigation.

The 40 percent of the nation's land that is irrigated produces 75 per cent of China's total grain output -- grain that provides the basic diet of the country's huge population.

"A high-efficiency agriculture utilizing water-saving irrigation is the only practical way for China to modernizing its agriculture,'' Qian Zhengying, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said.

That was also the consensus reached by senior water officials and experts attending the forum on water-saving agriculture and water-efficient irrigation, which was held last Saturday in Beijing.

Qian urged the government to upgrade outdated irrigation facilities as a way to help farmers build a high-yield and efficient agriculture in the near future.

While improving irrigation projects, construction of corresponding water drainage systems cannot be ignored in low-lying farmland in South China, Qian, former minister of water resources, said, adding that inefficiently monitored irrigation can waterlog soil, or increase soil's salinity (salt level) to the point where crops are damaged or destroyed.

The prices of irrigation water should have been raised long ago as a way to force users to save water, Qian said.

Facing a worsening crisis in the irrigation water supply caused by consecutive droughts, China has to seek high-yielding and efficient agriculture methods, which includes adopting and popularizing water-saving and efficient irrigation in this century, they said.

(China Daily 07/24/2001)