Severe Drought in Shaanxi: Fruit Failing, Wheat Thirsting
I. The Early Blooming Flowers
Global warming manifests in Xu’s vineyard as the messenger flowers emerging progressively earlier each year. He remembers clearly: two years ago it was 17 May, last year it was 15 May. Anticipating an even earlier arrival this year, he had arranged well in advance for a group of female workers from Yunnan to come on 8 May to thin the flowers and trim the bunches.
However, the extent of this year’s climatic anomaly far exceeded his expectations. Shaanxi endured record-breaking heat in late April and early May, forcing all the blossoms to open prematurely. Just the day before Xu spotted the messenger flower, local temperatures had already reached 39.9°C.
“In the past, people arranged the work; now the work arranges the people,” he says. Alongside 35 mu of Shine Muscat grapes, he also cultivates 5 mu of kiwifruit. The layout is designed to stagger the pollination schedules. This year, however, the kiwifruit flowered early, overlapping directly with the grape flowering period. Xu Yuanlin rushed to hire hands for manual pollination. Unsurprisingly, every nearby orchard was scrambling for workers. In the end, he had to recruit female labourers from a neighbouring county, who straight away quoted a steep daily rate of 240 yuan.
Mei County is known as China’s kiwifruit capital. It is said that one in every three kiwifruits consumed nationwide hails from Shaanxi, and of the crop grown in Shaanxi, half originates right here in Mei County. Driving west from Xi’an along the Lianhuo Expressway, the southern side of the road opens onto the vast floor of the Wei River valley. By mid-May, the wheat was nearing maturity, spread neatly across the land like a thick, heavy carpet. Heading further west, green patches became increasingly common among the bright yellow fields – these are the kiwifruit orchards.
Once you reach Mei County, wheat becomes merely a fleeting speck against the verdant expanse. Situated in the heart of the Guanzhong plain, the area south of the county town – stretching from the Wei River to the northern foothills of the Qinling Mountains – is carpeted in kiwifruit farms. First-time visitors are rarely left unimpressed by the sight: trellises nearly two metres high, laid out in neat grid rows, are thick with dark green vines and leaves the size of a palm. From the tops of the frames, slender new shoots, roughly a metre long, arch upwards. Supple and swaying in the breeze, they resemble millions of arms reaching out from the kiwifruit vines.
The soil here is rich, fed by a constant supply of clear water from Mount Taibai, providing an ideal growing environment for kiwifruit. Since the 1970s, Meixian has been cultivating and promoting kiwifruit; today, its annual output value exceeds 6 billion yuan, making it the local economy’s pillar industry.
When I visited Meixian in mid-May, it seemed everyone was sighing: The weather has been so unseasonable this year; the kiwifruit crop is bound to take a serious hit.
High temperatures triggered early blooming, and growers scrambled to pollinate the flowers. Yet many orchards still faced the dreaded “shaking bells” phenomenon they most feared to see: flower buds and stalks withering to death, hanging on the branches like bells swaying in the breeze. Alongside the premature bloom and poorly developed flower structures, the flowering period was compounded by a rare spell of drought, gales, and dust storms, all of which conspired to ruin pollination.
Qizhen Town in southern Meixian is one of the main kiwifruit-growing areas. Local farmer Mr Gao tends 40 mu of Xuxiang kiwifruit. “We couldn’t find anyone to help with pollination. People were too busy tending their own,” Gao explained. His orchard’s trees were never particularly vigorous to begin with, and without enough workers to “rescue” the crop, many flowers ended up as “shaking bells.” Even where fruit did set, it came out shrivelled, undersized, or deformed. Such fruit won’t hold on, so the only option is to cull them early.
Growing fruit trees is a capital-intensive venture. On average, kiwifruit takes four years from planting to first harvest. Old Gao pays 800 yuan a mu for land rent. Between pesticides, fertilisers, and growth regulators, his input costs typically run to about 3,500 yuan per mu. That brings the total to 4,300 yuan per mu, or over 170,000 yuan across his 40 mu. “I’m bound to lose money this year,” Old Gao says. The only question is how much.
Another kiwifruit variety in the orchard, Hongyang, has escaped unscathed. Because it flowers early, it avoided the scorching heat of early May. Hongyang is also a higher-value crop. Yet Old Gao planted few of them—so few that buyers aren’t even drawn to the orchard to purchase them. So even if they’ve grown well, it hardly matters.
Old Gao also tends a row of cherry trees. He and his wife picked a heavy bag full for me. The flesh was firm, with a pleasant balance of sweet and tart. By all accounts, it’s been a good year for cherries. Hail around the Qingming festival knocked out the first flush of blossoms, and the heat before harvest kept the fruit from swelling, but the drought and high temperatures concentrated their sugars and deepened their flavour. The dry air also kept aphid populations in check. “You can eat this year’s cherries without a second thought—we used a lot less pesticide,” a local neighbour told me.
For Old Gao, though, it feels like he placed his bets on the wrong horse. His primary crops—grapes and Xuxiang kiwifruit—were scorched during pollination, while the varieties he planted sparingly turned in a decent season. Though more people are beginning to recognise that crop diversification aids adaptation to a changing climate, it also significantly raises the management burden. With rural labour steadily draining away, concentrating on just one or two cash crops is already a hard enough feat. For most growers, broadening the crop mix remains easier said than done.
II. Migrant Women Workers Suffering Heatstroke
Few growers in Meixian cultivate Shine Muscat. Compared with the women from Yunnan, who have been growing grapes in their home counties for years, locals lack both the expertise and the stamina to endure the gruelling labour. Consequently, for the past three years, Xu Yuanlin has invited the same cohort of workers from Yunnan. Like a flock of migratory birds heading north, these women spend three to four months each year shuttling between Sichuan, Shaanxi, Henan, and even Liaoyang, working exclusively to shape the bunches and thin the fruit.
The employers book them on the cheapest red-eye flights. Their husbands are fully supportive of this cross-provincial work, even joking that not only does it pay well, but should the plane crash, it would also secure a 1.2 million yuan insurance payout for the family.
Thinning the flower clusters is no simple task. A single inflorescence can hold as many as 200 buds. The upper lateral shoots must be trimmed away, leaving just over 100 buds to complete self-pollination over a few days. At the tip of each bud, a dense array of tiny yellow flowers opens, resembling a fine brush. Because the high temperatures have impaired the development of the floral organs, growers apply gibberellic acid (a plant hormone, also known as a growth regulator) at this stage to ensure fruit set.
Once the grapes have set into clusters of bean-sized berries, thinning the fruit begins. This is a painstaking task, demanding immense care and patience. On each small cluster, berries growing upwards or downwards must be removed, leaving only those that grow horizontally. The whole cluster is then shaped into a tapering form from top to bottom. This ensures that as the fruit swells, the berries do not crowd and split against each other, and the bunches retain an attractive appearance for sale.
Pruning specifications vary from grower to grower, depending on their target sales channels. As a general rule, Shine Muscat flower clusters are pruned quite small. I visited an orchard in Chencang District, Baoji, where the owner, aiming to produce premium grapes for export to Dubai, insisted on leaving only four tiers of fruit. The resulting bunches weigh around 0.6 kg, small enough to be held comfortably in one hand. For the female workers, of course, this meant longer labour hours per bunch.
Last year, the rate was 1.1 yuan per flower cluster pruned, with 0.4 yuan going to the agency foreman. Seventeen women came to Xu Yuanlin’s orchard last year and worked for ten days. Xu paid out a total of 110,000 yuan, but the women themselves only received 70,000.
This year, the pay per flower cluster rose by 0.1 yuan. Those with quick hands can prune up to a thousand clusters a day; even slower workers manage seven or eight hundred. With determination, earning a thousand yuan a day is no stretch. By contrast, local female workers can only manage around four hundred. “It’s not about the money,” Xu Yuanlin explained. “The crucial thing is that flowering only lasts a few days, and I can’t afford to wait.” He added that many local women are envious but simply cannot keep up with the pace.
Xu’s requirements mirror those of most growers: six tiers per bunch, roughly 65 berries, yielding a mature weight of around 0.9 kg. These are typically bought outright by middlemen straight from the field for sale to supermarkets.
Once finished at Xu’s orchard, the women moved on to another orchard in Tianwang Town, 40 kilometres away, to continue their work. It was there I met the group. They wore loose, breathable trousers and long-sleeved shirts. Each donned a bucket hat with a cloth flap hanging down the back to shield their necks. Unlike local villagers, who tend to cluster together, chatting as they work, these women spread out, each silently pruning a single row of vines. Their small secateurs opened and closed with a steady, unhurried rhythm. The sound of snipped berries tapping against the plastic mulch fell in a steady patter, like rain.
During a brief midday rest, they finally gather together to smoke, drink and dance, offering a fleeting release from their exhaustion and easing the ache in their swollen limbs. Even in the sweltering heat of 37 or 38 °C, they relish the respite.
“Back home, we haven’t seen rain for six months,” tells me a worker from Yunnan with whom I am chatting. The tube wells and lakes have all run dry. The three women who arrived with her are growing grapes at home; the harvest is still a while off, yet this is exactly when the vines need water most, and there is none to give. “We don’t know what to do anymore. We just wait.” The rice has withered from drought, and there is no way to sow the corn or peanuts.
The workers have their worries, but Xu Yuanlin has plenty of his own. He is anxious about the pace of the grape thinning, yet dares not press them. Approaching the work as a technician, he places great emphasis on keeping a calm and steady mind while trimming the fruit. “You have to keep your pulse steady,” he explains. Only then will their movements remain precise.
There is another reason, of course: the fear of them collapsing from the heat. Afternoons have reached 38 °C every day this past week. Watching them bundled up head to toe, still dancing beneath the grapevines at midday, leaves him both in awe and deeply apprehensive.
At midday on 19 May, two workers fainted from heatstroke in the orchard. Fortunately, they pulled through after taking medication and resting. That same evening, Xu escorted them onto a flight back to Yunnan.
III. A Season Where One Misstep Compounds the Next
At the orchard in Tianwang Town mentioned earlier, the owner still shudders at the memory of the early bloom. He was in Gansu in early May. On the morning of the 1st, his brother called to say the orchard had flowered. By that afternoon, he had pulled all the workers from the strawberry fields back to thin the blossoms. He isn’t sure exactly when the first flowers opened, but it was certainly a few days before 1 May.
His grapes fared noticeably better than Xu Yuanlin’s: larger, plumper, and brighter in colour. The orchard sits on a yuan (a flat-topped tableland), which offers better air circulation. Although the blossoms appeared early, the overall temperatures remained relatively low.
Among the various grape and kiwifruit orchards I visited in Meixian County, fruit development can vary dramatically even between plots separated by just a few kilometres.
Put simply, while the broader climate shifts, each orchard’s microclimate and a grower’s field management practices can play a crucial mitigating role. Yet, against the backdrop of climate volatility, these human interventions often amount to little more than hindsight. At the micro-level of any given farm, human planning is rarely a match for the elements, leaving growers struggling to anticipate which adaptation strategies will truly hold up.
Beyond simply trying to survive the current crisis, what growers are reluctant to discuss is their anxiety about what comes next. As the old saying goes, a long drought will inevitably be followed by heavy rains. They are particularly worried about rainfall during the rapid fruit expansion phase, which would be catastrophic for the grapes.
Moreover, with flowering occurring so early, the harvest will inevitably come forward. If they hit the market in mid-August, the watermelon season will still be in full swing, leaving the grapes at a competitive disadvantage. It will also be the height of summer, meaning extra costs for cold storage to preserve them. The agricultural calendar is unforgiving: one misstep leads to another. Every grower is lamenting that the whole cycle has fallen apart. Yet they take comfort in each other’s words: “Everyone’s facing the same chaos. It’s the climate. Don’t lose heart.”
Xu Yuanlin had originally aimed to harvest 120,000 bunches of grapes this year; now he hopes to salvage no more than 70,000. After spotting the scout blossoms in early May, he braced himself for losses of 100,000 yuan. A fortnight later, he confessed, “Looking at it now, it’ll probably be over 200,000.”
The orchard in Tianwang Town mentioned earlier benefited from its elevation on a yuan with better air circulation and cooler temperatures, but this location comes with a major drawback: it lacks reliable irrigation. The owner must pump water uphill from the spillway of a nearby reservoir. Meanwhile, the few acres of wheat bordering the vineyard have been parched since the Lunar New Year and are now turning brown. “There’s no help for it. On the tablelands, we farm by grace of the weather. The electricity bill would cost more than the wheat is worth.” For these farmers, the wheat is merely subsistence land; they’ll take whatever the yield allows. The grapes, however, represent their entire year’s income.
If that reservoir runs dry, the vineyard will be lost.
IV. The Dried-up Reservoir
On the morning of 14 May, Xu Yuanlin discovered that even the tap water had stopped running, so he made do with boiled milk poured over beaten eggs for breakfast. He decided to go and see the reservoir for himself, and the following day we set off together for the Shitouhe Reservoir. The heat was intense, the air bleached white by the harsh glare of the sun. Upstream of the dam, the water level had plummeted. Above the receding shoreline lay concentric rings of sand-coloured reservoir bed. Only a narrow strip of water clung to the base of the dam; beyond that was a thick layer of silt, grey as cement. The far end had dried out completely, leaving only a stark, white rocky riverbed.
In April, the Shaanxi Provincial Meteorological Bureau issued a warning, noting that average spring rainfall across the province was at its lowest for the same period since 1961, while average temperatures were the third highest recorded since that year.
The reservoir sits at the south-western edge of Mei County. The Shitouhe River carves a northward path through the Qinling Mountains, emerging here to feed into the Wei River. Historically water-rich, the Shitouhe basin flows through the Taibai Mountain region, once famed for the saying, ‘As high as the mountain, so high the water.’ Nongfu Spring set up a collection base on Mount Taibai, which stands as the sole high-altitude snow mountain source among its eight major supply points. The brand’s flagship claim boasts that ‘glacial meltwater from 3,000 metres above sea level winds its way down the mountain streams before feeding into the intake pipes at Nongfu Spring’s Mount Taibai facility.’
As early as the Republic of China era, the Shaanxi Provincial Water Resources Department had envisaged damming the river here to create a reservoir. That vision, however, was not realised until 1994. Since then, Shitouhe Reservoir has supplied domestic water to the twin cities of Xi’an and Baoji, earning the moniker ‘the Water Tower of Guanzhong’.
However, according to *China Water Resources News*, inflow runoff into Shitouhe Reservoir this year is down by forty per cent compared to the long-term average. Readings from soil moisture monitoring stations across the irrigation districts reveal that surface soil water content has plummeted below twelve per cent. Meanwhile, sustained high temperatures have driven a thirty per cent spike in daily urban water consumption.
At a viewing spot by the reservoir, a group of male villagers who had arrived by motorcycle smoked and talked over one another about this year’s drought. When one remarked it was a once-in-eighty-years event, the conversation turned to the devastating three-year drought of 1929. They speculated on how much water might still be left in the reservoir—could it be less than a tenth? One villager recalled the days when he would stand right there and secretly drop a fishing line into the water; today, only the cracked, desiccated reservoir floor lay before him.
‘Even Hanzhong is running dry!’ they exclaimed, referring to the Yinhong Jishi water transfer project. This scheme diverts water from the upper reaches of the Hongyan River—part of the Han River basin within Taibai County—and channels it through a nearly twenty-kilometre tunnel bored through the Qinling Mountains, allowing it to flow by gravity into Shitouhe Reservoir. Yet this year, Hanzhong has endured its most severe drought in almost a decade. Runoff in the Bao River, which the Hongyan River feeds into, has fallen by a third compared to the same period in typical years. With the Han River barely able to sustain itself, there is no surplus water left to send north of the Qinling range.
V. Premature Senescence in Wheat
Wheat was traditionally cultivated on plots reserved for household grain consumption. Even with a reduced yield, it would normally be enough to feed a family. This year, however, the hardest hit have been the large-scale wheat growers.
Regarding these larger operations, I observed two distinct situations in Meixian. One involved a state-owned farm cultivating over 800 mu of wheat south of the Wei River. Because the land lies on a river floodplain, the wells are only six metres deep, offering better irrigation prospects than wheat grown on higher ground. The problem, however, is that the sandy soil cannot retain water or nutrients. Whether irrigated frequently or sparingly, the yield remains poor. In years with favourable weather, when other areas harvest over 1,000 jin of wheat, this region manages only around 700 jin.
This year has been even harsher. A few rains fell after the Lunar New Year, but they merely dampened the surface soil. After the most recent cloud-seeding operation, one resident remarked, “It didn’t even wash the dust off my car roof.” With conditions looking increasingly arid after March, the farm’s manager explained that although they had irrigated several times, the 800-mu field was simply too vast to be saved by artificial watering alone.
Large patches of wheat flag leaves across the fields have already turned yellow and brown, signalling premature senescence; in severe cases, the crop will die back completely. By day, the soil around the wheat roots is scorching hot to the touch. The manager noted that the cost to grow wheat here exceeds 500 yuan per mu. At this rate, even if they manage to harvest 400 jin per mu, with wheat priced at just 1.2 yuan per jin, they are guaranteed to lose money.
I asked whether there were any subsidies for grain cultivation. The manager explained that the subsidies are directed at individual farmers rather than state-run farms such as this one (with the sole exception of a 20 yuan per mu allowance for wide-furrow sowing).
Another form of support is the so-called ‘one spray, three preventions’ initiative. This involves mixing insecticides, fungicides and plant growth regulators—such as micronutrients and drought-resistant agents—into a single application designed to ward off pests, diseases and dry-hot winds. Given the severe drought this year, conditions for widespread pest and disease outbreaks have been largely absent, rendering the spray relatively pointless. Nevertheless, because the funding is channelled through local agricultural extension stations rather than the growers themselves, the farm had little choice but to undergo the treatment twice.
By comparison, the 90 mu of high-standard farmland developed by the government for the farm has proven rather useful, largely thanks to its buried sprinkler system. A direct comparison reveals that this setup outperforms the reel-type sprinkler machines used to irrigate the rest of the wheat fields. The only drawback is that in the blind spots left untouched by the spray, the crop remains withered and yellow.
Prior to 2022, the farm primarily cultivated wheat for silage, selling it to neighbouring livestock enterprises. At 1,200–1,500 yuan per mu, this was far more lucrative than selling the grain itself. However, under current grain security policies, this practice has now been banned.
On 20 May the year before last, a hailstorm devastated the area, wiping out the entire crop. The insurance payout amounted to 70,000 yuan. Measured against cultivation costs exceeding 400,000 yuan, the compensation was hardly a consolation.
Furthermore, there is growing anxiety that if the drought persists, the loss of the wheat crop could be compounded by the inability to sow the following maize crop, rendering the entire year’s efforts in vain.
North of the Wei River, however, the loess tableland presents a starkly different picture. Locals refer to this area as the “北塬”. Encompassing Fufeng and Qishan counties, it is a vast, flat expanse that serves as a crucial commercial grain base for the Guanzhong region. Wheat dominates the landscape, interspersed with a handful of kiwifruit and apple orchards. Wherever irrigation canals reach, the wheat can be watered; without them, farmers are left entirely at the mercy of the weather.
The North Tableland falls within a newer irrigation zone. Water is channeled from the Baoji Gorge Reservoir to the west through irrigation networks and stored in a series of small reservoirs dammed across the valleys of the tableland. These smaller reservoirs form the backbone of local drought-resistance efforts. In the extensive wheat fields within their reach, the crops stand twenty to thirty centimetres shorter than in previous years. Fortunately, the ears are well-filled, their hue a healthy green, turning yellow methodically from the base upwards as they mature. Provided the weather remains favourable in the coming weeks, yields should remain largely unaffected.
Conversely, the wheat grown on higher terraces, beyond the reach of irrigation, has already withered to a desiccated yellow. Farmers refer to this as “heat-induced maturation”. Yields in these plots are projected to fall to a mere three to four hundred jin per mu.
Overall, the wheat here is in considerably better shape than south of the Wei River. Access to irrigation is merely a secondary factor. The fundamental disparity lies in economic returns: fruit orchards generate tens of thousands of yuan per mu, whereas grain yields barely a thousand. The imbalance is stark, and the mindset of farmers on either side of this divide reflects it. Fruit growers will spare no expense on water and electricity to protect their harvest. Yet for wheat farmers, every irrigation cycle brings the sharp sting of mounting utility bills.
“The more grain you grow, the poorer you become.” In a year ravaged by drought, this observation rings particularly bleak.
With just twenty days until the wheat harvest, farmers are caught between two fears. They dread the dry, hot winds that accelerate the plants’ premature decline and yellowing; yet they also dread heavy rain. If the already weakened roots absorb excessive moisture, the cells will burst and the stalks will wither rapidly—a scenario locals describe as the wheat being “choked”.
In the days after I left Baoji, temperatures continued to linger between 38°C and 39°C. By mid-May, industrial water use was suspended in parts of the city, and residential supply was restricted to scheduled windows. On 21 May, coinciding with the Xiaoman solar term, Meixian county issued an orange high-temperature warning, with localised temperatures expected to hit 40°C.
Everyone is waiting for the rain, yet anxious that it might fall too lightly, too heavily, or last too long.
All photos taken by the author unless otherwise credited.
Editor: Tianle