Tuesday, June 7

Arid parches of China's "Land of fish and rice"

The drought access routes of the Middle LAKE HONGHU, China - and Eastern European China Lake Honghu in one wide of boats exposed mud dried, stranded and dying fish farms, threatening the livelihoods of inhabitants in the province of Hubei, which call this their "land of fish and rice".

Dry spells and floods almost every year make different parts of China, and officials are susceptible for each the worst call in 50 years or more.


But many residents around the Lake said, was a fitting label for the months-long drought, which drastically declined the Lake, the surrounding Yangtze River, and many other lakes and tributaries along the mighty river course by the agriculture and industrial heartland.

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"I've never seen, never this bad it." See the rice. It's all go yellow and the legs will die if we some rain soon, "said Ouyang Jinghuang, pepper-haired 66-year-old farmer paddy fields in the vicinity of Lake Honghu tendency."


"We are all well digging and buy our drinking water." "Usually we have so much water here, that we not worry about floods, droughts."


The dry season is a jarring reminder of how China, the world's second largest economy, is based on the increasingly tense water resources feed its people and fast-growing number of hydro stations.


These problems could deepen if rain does not soon come.


"There is water, but it is not enough to share," said Gao Desheng, a farmer his sixties, a break after plowing a field with an ox, centuries old farming method favors still here.


"Before, the sky would send more than enough water." But this year the sky has just stopped sending. "It is as if we offended it."


Stranded in the mud
Lake Honghu is located next to the Yangtze River by a strip of land with dikes and sluices separated.


The lake waters are usually up to five feet deep across much of the area of 348 km2 (134 sq mile) at this time of year, said Pan Cheng's, a Sun rice farmer and crabs breeders who live along its shores.


"Now that it water, is about 40 centimeters deep in most of it," he said. "The farmers are already hart-Up, and when, which dries well, a disaster will be this year."


The Lake is stranded littered with hundreds of fish and houseboats on mud of the receding waters. The remaining muddy water in ponds on nearby farms and marshland is to keep alive fish on the farm way is pumped.


"Almost all fish have died already, and we try to keep those links alive," said Wu Zhaowei, a burly man in his twenties, which was a morning calm on a stranded houseboat to drag from water in a fish-raising housing.


"Many people have already lost all their fish, and that's a lot of money."


Farmers said would have to generous rainfall in coming weeks or the first their two annual rice crops wither and die could, and more of the thousands of fish and crabs could lose farms all their shares.


Millions of farmers in Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and other provinces are facing similar threats of damaged or even lost rice harvest.


On Friday, the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs said almost 35 million people in five provinces on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River by the drought are affected, to varying degrees. This figure includes 4.2 million, have the difficulty getting drinking water.


Direct economic losses it was almost 15 billion yuan ($ 2.3 billion), said.


China's economy, the world's second largest, the harvest could absorb likely losses so far with only a small bump in food inflation.


But threatens the drought in power production, cut as the Yangtze River and its tributaries feed the three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project, as well as thousands of smaller hydro plants.


"Yangtze River has highs and deep, depending on what do heavens, said" Li bin, a fisherman casting networks on the banks of the River.


"But I have not seen it before this low and it was even lower before they let water from the three gorges, a few days ago," said 60-year-old a hrigen.


He pointed about 2 meters a place along the river above where he stood.


"That's about where it should be at this time of year, so we will catch up too much rain need." "I see in the near future."


Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

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