The North Turns Southern—Farmers Rush to Dig Trenches
Foodthink Says
Floods claim lives and devastate agriculture. The day before yesterday, Foodthink recounted how a Miyun farm was levelled by floodwaters; fortunately, the farm workers escaped the deluge. But people can flee—what about the crops? In areas not hit hardest, vast stretches of farmland have turned to mud, and farmers must face the ravaged fields and rebuild their livelihoods.
Over the past three years, Foodthink has tracked how abnormal summer rainfall across northern China is affecting farming. In 2021 and 2022, an ecological farm in Luanzhou, Hebei, was struck by back-to-back rare downpours that destroyed most crops across 70 mu (roughly 4.6 hectares) of farmland; in 2023, the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region experienced the most severe rainfall in 60 years—not only did entire harvests rot in the fields for farmers in Beijing and Hebei, but some nearly lost their homes to the floods; and in the summer of 2024, persistent heat and rain continued, with cumulative rainfall from June to August roughly double the seasonal average. For some farmers, the combination of high temperatures, high humidity, and water-saturated soil with nowhere to drain was worse than the extreme rainfall of the previous two years.
I. Dig Trenches! Dig Trenches! Dig Trenches!
For the last two or three years, Liu Gang has lamented each summer at the start of flood season that he has never seen so much rain in all his years of farming. Yet every following year, that record of disbelief is broken again. During the harrowing once-in-60-years downpour that struck the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region in 2023, Shunyi was not the worst hit, yet all the open-field vegetables at Little Willow Farm were wiped out, and the acids carried in the rain made the produce bitter and astringent. Liu Gang, who had always taken pride in his farm’s vegetables, felt he could not face recommending them to customers.
Last year, Beijing escaped extreme downpours, but the relentless summer rains pushed total precipitation to a record high instead. For Liu Gang, this was even more devastating. Torrential storms are intense, but they come and go quickly; nearly a month of continuous rain, however, left the soil completely waterlogged and ruined. Liu Gang was beyond tears.
After long, painful reflection, Liu Gang finally came to accept that the northern climate is turning “southern”, and that digging drainage trenches is the top priority—the sooner you start, the sooner you benefit. Early this spring, he re-landscaped the site: besides clearing the existing channels, he lowered the southernmost strip of land by half a metre to follow the natural gradient, and hauled the excavated earth to the northern end of the farm. This artificial slope encourages water to flow, and isolated patches of standing water can be pumped out within roughly two days.
So after this latest round of storms, although much of the open-field produce was still waterlogged and some farm infrastructure was damaged, at least the autumn seedlings survived, and Liu Gang seemed more optimistic than in the previous two years. “There will be losses, but it’s better than last year, when everything was wiped out,” he said.
Pingren Farm in Xingshou Town, Changping District, sits at a low elevation and is prone to flooding. Zhao Fei, who oversees production, explained that drainage work had not been done properly in 2018 and 2021—digging trenches in the middle of heavy rain was a last-minute scramble that still failed to prevent total crop losses.
Corn harvest season is now in full swing, but after this storm, 10 mu (about 1.6 acres) of organic corn suffered lodging, representing a loss of 40,000–50,000 yuan. Fortunately, organic farms like Pingren typically practise crop diversification, so sweet potatoes, okra and peanuts escaped unscathed.
In recent years, to prevent a repeat of the 2018 floods, Pingren Farm has dug drainage trenches in front of and behind every polytunnel and maintains them continuously. The farm’s internal drainage system is now fairly well developed. Beyond infrastructure, the farm also draws lessons from every disaster to improve its management. For instance, the land slopes down from north to south. After last year’s heavy rain, the vegetables in the two polytunnels on the south side were completely waterlogged, so this year it was decided not to plant in the southern fields during the rainy season.
Kongkong Valley‘s farmer Xiankong showed a hint of impatience when Foodthink came to ask about flood damage again this year. “Rain is something you simply cannot avoid; no amount of preparedness helps,” said Xiankong. “Unless you move away.”
Kongkong Valley lies in the Pinggu mountain area, at a relatively high elevation where drainage is easier. Even so, Xiankong still dug trenches when making ridges for this year’s planting, so that water could run off along the road.
Even then, the aubergines and chillies at Kongkong Valley have largely rotted in the ground and must be dug up. The land, already limited in yield, has virtually nothing left to sell. All they can do is wait until the weather starts to cool before planting the next round of Chinese cabbage and leafy greens. But the knock-on problem is that the heavy rain has not only delayed subsequent sowing—because the soil moisture is so high, crops such as carrots, daikon radishes and Chinese cabbage cannot yet be sown for seedlings.
As northern China has seen more flood disasters in recent years, farmers are beginning to appreciate the importance of digging trenches. Yet many have not acted promptly. For one thing, digging trenches inevitably demands labour and money, and farming was already a thin-margin business—some feel that piling on more investment simply is not worth it and that giving up would be easier. For another, drainage has never been something a single household can solve on its own; it depends on the adequacy of surrounding public infrastructure.
Take Pingren Farm as an example: while its internal drainage is now essentially in place, getting the water off the farm remains a challenge. The village only began to prioritise flood prevention on public land last year and dug some drainage channels, but those channels have grown over with weeds and are prone to blockage. For nearby strawberry farmers who leave their land fallow over summer, drainage is not a pressing concern, but this kind of infrastructure does little to support farms that grow vegetables through the wet season. Pingren Farm’s workers have to clear silt from the channels themselves, yet when the rains are heavy, water still surges back in.
But water does not simply vanish—it always flows downhill. Every time it rains in these three years, the few households on lower ground are always flooded. With no functioning waterworks left in the village, no one can rally people to dig trenches, and there is no young labour force to do the work; these households bear the floods in silence.
II. The North Turns Southern—What Are Farmers to Do?
Standing water in the fields, lodged or drowned crops, damaged infrastructure… these are merely the acute damage wrought by the rains. In the much longer stretch ahead, the problem of soil saturation will continue to plague farmers—soil with smaller inter-particle gaps holds moisture well, but its dense aggregate structure also restricts air circulation. Kongkong Valley Farm’s soil is precisely this type of clay. Xiankong raised his ridges higher in an attempt to counter it, yet the problem persists.
Also situated in a mountainous area, Lianxiang Farm in Pingquan City, Chengde, fares somewhat better soil-wise. The topsoil was reclaimed by the village during the “Learn from Dazhai” campaign; it is loess by nature, originally of poor quality, but after years of composting has been improved to a loam-and-sand mix that drains more readily than clay. Yet prolonged damp weather over-saturates the soil, damaging root systems and weakening their ability to absorb oxygen. Rainwater percolation leaches nutrients deeper into the soil, leaving corn deficient in fertiliser and suffering waterlogging-induced root rot.
This raises a further question: once extreme weather surpasses a certain threshold, can ecological agriculture still demonstrate its advantages? The heart of ecological agriculture is healthy soil—soil rich in organic matter that retains moisture and breathes well, serving as a vital buffer for agriculture against climate change. Yet farmers’ experiences in recent years show that after rains this extreme, the soil takes far longer to recover than it once did. And the likelihood of extreme rainfall will only increase in the years to come. How are ecological farmers to face this “new normal”?
Common sense suggests that the north’s relatively dry, clear weather should favour corn pollination, but as rainfall increases, humid air leads to uneven pollination and missing kernels. Further troubling northern farmers: waterlogged soil becomes impossible to till or sow; as the old farming proverb warns, “drought breeds pests, wetness breeds disease”—rising humidity brings soft rot to Brassica vegetables and downy mildew to lettuce and Indian lettuce. At this point, the only crops that still thrive are water spinach, amaranth, and the ever-stalwart spring onions, which seem immune to disease.
Every rainy season, Yingying at Lianxiang Farm worries about root rot in the vegetables and split tomatoes. Yet the farm refuses to switch to moisture-loving crops to suit the increased humidity—after all, drought remains the more common threat in the north. It is impossible to guard against both. “As for how much rain we get, that is up to the sky,” said Yingying. Any adverse weather damages yields, and all a farmer can do is plan as best as possible to keep output steady. Liu Gang, for his part, has experimented over the past few years of back-to-back disasters with taro, a moisture-loving crop, introducing a new category to Beijing consumers.
The solar terms are losing their reliability too. Last summer’s unbroken rain prevented Pingren Farm’s seeder from entering the fields; not even by the Start of Autumn had any Chinese cabbage been planted across all of Changping. Chen Ziyu, based in Baoding, says rain has fallen for the last two weeks non-stop, preventing aubergine and green pepper seeds from germinating; they simply rot in the soil, and he must wait for the weather to improve before resowing.
III. Rising Costs
Beyond the trench-digging and replanting already mentioned, strengthening infrastructure and maintaining crop diversity are common strategies ecological farms turn to in the face of flooding. Whichever aspect they invest in, the farm’s operating costs rise.
Xiaomei at Pingren Farm explains that coping with heavy rain means setting aside land for drainage infrastructure and raising more ridges across the fields—which means compromises on planting area and density. On the labour side, digging and clearing drainage channels, reinforcing polytunnels, fitting rain cover film on the roofs, and arranging personnel to stand watch all pile on expenses. In addition, to replenish the nutrients leached deeper into the soil by the rain, they must apply more liquid enzyme.
Kongkong Valley practises entirely open-field cultivation—no polytunnels, no fertiliser, no machinery—making it even more “at the mercy of the weather” than Pingren Farm. The upside is that input costs are low, consisting mainly of labour. After a heavy downpour, weeds explode in growth, and the weeding bill at Kongkong Valley skyrockets, accounting for 80 per cent of labour costs.
Even when some produce survives the floods, much of it has lost its flavour. The farmers themselves are disappointed: tomatoes rot the moment they are picked, and peppers and aubergines are watery and tasteless. This takes a serious bite out of “flavour”—one of the key selling points of ecological produce. Xiankong notes that consumers are paying ever more attention to how vegetables look, yet natural disasters inevitably sacrifice some of their appearance. Should a farm lower its usual standards to sell “headless” celery stalks or half a head of cauliflower? Can consumers accept “ugly vegetables”? These seemingly inconsequential questions become remarkably important when times are hard.
A growing body of research confirms the link between extreme weather and reduced crop yields—though one hardly needs researchers to build complex models; common sense alone makes the connection plain. Do not wait until there are no vegetables left to eat before you start missing these “ugly vegetables”. Likewise, do not wait until every farmer has been forced to abandon agriculture before you regret not thinking of ways to lend them a helping hand today. Faced with the shared crisis of climate change, how to support food producers so that they can weather the storm with greater confidence is something everyone should reflect upon deeply.
