About half of the country's existing irrigated farmland will be introduced with a water-saving, efficient irrigation during the 10th Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005), officials with the Ministry of Water Resources were quoted as saying by Tuesday's China Daily.

The price for irrigation water will be raised by 35 to 50 percent to meet the actual cost, as "the present low pricing works against the government's advocacy of water conservation," said the report.

The Ministry of Water Resources invited some experts Monday to solicit advice and solutions to the major issues facing the future development of China's water-efficient agriculture.

One of the most serious problems was that about 60 percent of the country's irrigation water is being wasted because poor ditches and antiquated irrigation facilities cause much loss of water through evaporation and percolation into the ground.

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

China hopes to supply more water to improve the ecological environment while not increasing the consumption of water for irrigation, which consumes more than 70 percent of China's total water supply today.

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.

"A high-efficiency agriculture utilizing water-saving irrigation is the only practical way for China to modernize its agriculture," the report said.

(Xinhua News Agency 07/24/2001)