Author: Lang Lili

Water is shortage and precious in Northwest China. That is way, during 24^th May-1^st June, the SHUI socio-economic team decided to dig in a water-saving investigation in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China.

Agricultural water consumption accounts for about 87 % of the total water supply in Xinjiang. Cotton is the main planted crop there. The irrigation (e.g water) fee accounts for about 6% of the total cotton production cost. Most farmers here adopt water-saving technologies, mainly using drip irrigation under plastic film. However, for new water-saving irrigation technologies, most farmers are risk averse for the uncertainty along with new technologies. They are likely to depend on the government support.

Xinjiang is trying to promote Smart Agriculture, aiming to improve the water utilization efficient and irrigate more land with less water. Fot that reason,  SHui WP5 team is undertaking extensive cost-benefit analyses of new water-saving technologies to increase the adopting ratio of new water-saving technologies to help farmers make the right decisions.