North turns South: Farmers busy digging ditches
Foodthink Says
Floods devour lives and devastate agriculture. The day before yesterday, Foodthink shared the story of how a farm in Miyun was razed to the ground by floods; fortunately, the staff managed to escape. But while people can run, crops cannot. In areas where the damage was less severe, vast tracts of land have turned to slush, leaving farmers to face ruined fields and the struggle to rebuild their livelihoods.
For the past three years, Foodthink has closely monitored the impact of abnormal summer precipitation in North China on farming. In 2021 and 2022, an ecological farm in Luanzhou, Hebei, suffered rare torrential rains that destroyed most of the crops across 70 mu of land. In 2023, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region was hit by a once-in-60-years extreme rainstorm; farmers in Beijing and Hebei saw their entire harvests rot in the ground, and some nearly lost their homes to the floods. The summer of 2024 brought persistent heat and rain, with cumulative rainfall from June to August roughly double the annual average. For some farmers, the combination of high temperatures and humidity—leaving the soil saturated with nowhere for the water to drain—was even worse than the extreme rainfall of the previous two years.
I. Digging Ditches! Digging Ditches! Digging Ditches!
Starting roughly two or three years ago, every time the flood season arrived in summer, Liu Gang would remark that he had never seen so much rain in all his years of farming. Yet, the following year, that record would be broken. During the harrowing once-in-60-years rainstorms that hit the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in 2023, Shunyi was not the hardest-hit area, but Xiaoliushu’s open-field vegetables were still completely wiped out. Moreover, acidic substances in the rainwater left the vegetables tasting astringent and bitter. Liu Gang, who had always taken great pride in his produce, felt too ashamed to recommend them to his customers.
Last year, Beijing didn’t experience extreme rainstorms, but the summer rain was incessant, and total precipitation actually broke records. For Liu Gang, this was even more devastating. While storms are powerful, they pass quickly; however, nearly a month of continuous rainfall left the soil completely waterlogged and rotten. Liu Gang was left in despair.
Learning the hard way, Liu Gang finally realised that the climate of the North is ‘Southernising’. Digging ditches became the priority—the sooner the work started, the sooner the benefits would be felt. In the early spring of this year, he reorganised the land. In addition to clearing the channels, he lowered the southernmost part of the land by half a metre according to the terrain, transporting the excavated soil to the north of the farm. This artificial slope helps the water flow, allowing waterlogged patches to be drained using pumps within approximately two days.
Consequently, after this round of heavy rain, although many open-field vegetables were still flooded and some agricultural facilities were damaged, at least the autumn seedlings were saved. Liu Gang seems more optimistic than he was in previous years. “Losses will occur, but it’s better than the total wipeout we had last year,” he said.
Pingren Farm, located in Xingshou Town, Changping District, sits on lower ground and is prone to flooding. Zhao Fei, who is responsible for production, said that because the drainage works were poorly executed in 2018 and 2021, they had to dig ditches in the pouring rain, but these desperate last-minute measures failed to prevent the crops from being completely destroyed.
It is currently the maize harvest season. Following this round of heavy rain, 10 mu of organic maize have lodged, representing a loss of 40,000 to 50,000 yuan. Fortunately, organic farms like Pingren often employ diversified planting, so crops such as sweet potatoes, okra, and peanuts escaped unscathed.
In recent years, to avoid a repeat of the 2018 floods, Pingren Farm has dug ditches both in front of and behind every greenhouse, maintaining and renovating them continuously. The farm’s internal drainage facilities are now relatively comprehensive. Beyond infrastructure, the farm learns from every disaster to improve its management. For example, the land slopes from north to south; last year, the vegetables in the two southernmost greenhouses were rotted by rain, so this year they decided not to plant in the southern fields during the rainy season.
Xian Kong, a farmer at Kongkonggu, showed some impatience when Foodthink returned this year to ask about the disaster. “You can’t avoid the rain; asking about prevention is useless,” Xian Kong said, “unless you move away.”
Kongkonggu is located in the mountains of Pinggu; the terrain is higher, and drainage is relatively easy. Despite his words, Xian Kong still dug ditches when ridging his vegetables this year, allowing the water to flow down along the road.
Even so, the aubergines and chillies at Kongkonggu have largely rotted in the ground and need to be dug out. On land that already has limited yields, there is little left to sell. He can only wait for the weather to cool before planting the next crop of Chinese cabbage and leafy greens. But a further problem arises: the heavy rain not only delays subsequent sowing but also means that carrots, white radishes, and Chinese cabbage cannot be sown or transplanted for the time being due to the excessive soil moisture.
As rain-related disasters in the North have become more frequent in recent years, farmers have begun to realise the importance of digging ditches. However, many have not acted in time. Firstly, digging ditches consumes manpower and financial resources; farming profits are already slim, and some believe that if further investment is required, it would be better to simply give up. Secondly, drainage is never something a single household can solve alone; it depends on the improvement of surrounding public facilities.
Take Pingren Farm as an example: although the internal drainage facilities are largely in place, getting the water out remains an issue. Last year, the village began to prioritise flood prevention on public land and dug drainage ditches, but these have become overgrown with grass and are easily blocked. For the strawberry farmers nearby whose land lies fallow during the summer, drainage is not a major concern, but such infrastructure does not support farms growing summer vegetables. Pingren Farm employees have to clear the silt from the ditches themselves, yet during heavy rain, water still backflows into the farm.
But water does not simply vanish, and it always flows downwards. Over the last three years, every time it rains, several farmers in the low-lying areas are invariably flooded. With no water conservancy projects in the village, there is no one to mobilise people to dig ditches, nor is there any young labour to do the work. When these households are flooded, they have nowhere to turn for help.
II. The North becomes the South: What happens to the farmers?
Waterlogging in the fields, crop lodging or drowning, and damage to facilities… these are merely the acute effects of rain disasters. In the longer term, the issue of soil moisture saturation will continue to plague farmers—soils with smaller structural pore spaces have higher water retention, but this dense aggregate structure also weakens air circulation. The soil at Kongkonggu Farm is this kind of clay. Xiankong tried raising the ridges higher, yet the problem persisted.
Also located in a mountainous area, the soil at Lianshang Farm in Pingquan, Chengde, is somewhat better. The soil layer was created by the village during the “Learning from Dazhai” agricultural era; it was originally loess, which is poor quality, but after years of composting, it has been improved into loam and sandy soil, which has better permeability than clay. However, continuous damp weather has led to excessive soil saturation, damaging plant root systems and reducing their oxygen absorption. The infiltration of rainwater also carries nutrients deep into the soil, causing nutrient deficiency in maize and root rot.
This raises a question: when extreme weather exceeds a certain threshold, can ecological agriculture still demonstrate its advantages? The core of ecological agriculture is healthy soil—soil high in organic matter that can hold water and breathe, acting as a vital buffer for agriculture in the face of climate change. However, the experiences of farmers in recent years show that after such extreme rain disasters, the soil takes longer to recover than in the past. With the probability of extreme precipitation increasing in the future, how should ecological farmers face this “new normal”?
By all rights, the relatively dry and sunny weather of the North should be beneficial for maize pollination, but as precipitation increases, the humid air leads to uneven pollination and missing kernels. Other frustrations for Northern farmers include soil that is too wet to till or sow; as the agricultural proverb goes, “drought brings pests, moisture brings disease”. Increased humidity also causes soft rot in cruciferous vegetables, and downy mildew in lettuce and romaine. In such conditions, only water spinach, amaranth, and the hardy spring onion tend to survive.
Every rainy season, Yingying from Lianshang Farm worries about root rot in vegetables and splitting in tomatoes. Yet, the farm does not switch to moisture-loving crops to adapt to the higher humidity, as droughts are still more common in the North. It is a trade-off. “As for the amount of rain, it’s all down to the weather,” says Yingying. Any unfavourable weather leads to crop loss, and all farmers can do is plan as best as possible to maintain output. After suffering consecutive disasters, Liu Gang has spent the last few years attempting to grow moisture-loving taro, introducing a new variety to consumers in Beijing.
Even the solar terms are failing. Last summer, continuous rain meant that the seeders at Pingren Farm could not enter the fields; the autumn cabbage was not planted throughout the entire Changping district by the Start of Autumn (Liqiu). Chen Ziyu in Baoding says it has rained for the past two weeks, preventing eggplant and pepper seeds from germinating, leaving them to rot in the soil until the weather improves and they can be resown.
III. Increasing Costs
Beyond the aforementioned digging of ditches and replanting, strengthening facilities and maintaining crop diversity are common ways ecological farms cope with flooding. Regardless of where the effort is directed, the farm’s operational costs increase.
Xiaomei from Pingren Farm says that to deal with heavy rain, land must be cleared for drainage infrastructure, and raising more ridges in the fields means compromising on planting area and density. In terms of labour, digging and cleaning drainage channels, reinforcing greenhouses, adding rain-proof membranes to the roofs, and arranging staff for monitoring all add to the cost. Additionally, to replace fertilisers leached into the deep soil by rain, they have to increase the use of liquid enzymes.
Kongkonggu relies entirely on open-air planting, with no greenhouses, fertilisers, or machinery; compared to Pingren Farm, they are more “at the mercy of the elements”. The benefit is low investment, primarily consisting of labour costs. However, after heavy rain, weeds grow wildly, causing weeding costs at Kongkonggu to soar, accounting for eighty per cent of their labour costs.
Even when some produce survives the rain disasters, the taste often deteriorates. The farmers themselves find it lacking: tomatoes rot as soon as they are picked, and peppers and eggplants taste watery and bland. This significantly undermines “deliciousness”, one of the key selling points of ecological produce. Xiankong notes that consumers are increasingly concerned with the appearance of vegetables, but natural disasters inevitably sacrifice some of that aesthetic. Should the farm lower its usual standards and sell “headless” celery stalks or half-formed cauliflowers? Can consumers accept “ugly vegetables”? These seemingly trivial questions become crucial in times of hardship.
More and more research confirms the link between extreme weather and reduced food yields—of course, researchers do not need complex models for this; common sense tells us the relationship. Let us not wait until there are no vegetables left to eat before we begin to miss these “ugly vegetables”. Likewise, let us not wait until farmers are forced to abandon agriculture before regretting that we failed to find ways to lend them a helping hand today. Faced with the shared crisis of climate change, how we support food producers so they can survive with more confidence is something everyone should consider deeply.
