The North Turns South: Farmers Dig Ditches
Foodthink Says
The floods have claimed lives and wreaked havoc on agriculture. Two days ago, Foodthink shared the story of a Miyun farm flattened by floodwaters; thankfully, the workers escaped with their lives. Yet while people can run, crops cannot. Even in areas that escaped the worst, vast tracts of land have been reduced to waterlogged mud. Farmers are now forced to confront their devastated fields and piece their livelihoods back together.
Over the past three years, Foodthink has been tracking the impact of erratic summer rainfall on agriculture across northern China. In 2021 and 2022, unprecedented deluges repeatedly struck an ecological farm in Luanzhou, Hebei, wiping out most crops across 70 mu of land. The following year, the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region faced a storm of a once-in-60-year magnitude. For farmers in Beijing and Hebei, entire harvests rotted in the fields, and some nearly lost their homes to the rising waters. This past summer brought a relentless combination of sweltering heat and heavy rain, with cumulative precipitation from June to August reaching roughly double the long-term average. For many growers, this persistent heat and humidity—coupled with waterlogged soil that had nowhere to drain—proved even more devastating than the extreme downpours of the previous two years.
I. Dig the ditches! Dig the ditches! Dig the ditches!
Roughly two or three years ago, Liu Gang began noting each summer flood season that he had never witnessed such heavy rainfall in all his years of farming. Yet every following year, his previous benchmarks would invariably be surpassed. During the 2023 once-in-60-years torrential rain that sent shockwaves across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Shunyi was not among the hardest-hit areas, but Little Willow Farm’s open-field crops were completely wiped out. Moreover, acidic compounds in the rainwater left the vegetables astringent and bitter. Liu Gang, who had always been fiercely proud of his own harvest, felt too embarrassed to recommend them to buyers.
Last year, Beijing avoided extreme downpours, but relentless summer rain actually set a new record for total precipitation. For Liu Gang, this proved even more dire. While heavy storms are intense, they come and go quickly; nearly a month of continuous rainfall, however, left the soil completely waterlogged and degraded. The situation left him utterly helpless.
Reflecting on these painful losses, Liu Gang finally realised that the northern climate is increasingly adopting a ‘southern’ character, and that digging drainage ditches is absolutely crucial—the earlier he starts, the sooner he will reap the benefits. This early spring, he completely overhauled the land layout. Along with clearing the channels, he lowered the southernmost plots by half a metre to suit the natural topography, transporting the excavated soil to the northern edge of the farm. This artificial gradient promotes water runoff, meaning isolated waterlogged patches can be pumped out in about two days.
In the wake of this latest downpour, while many open-field vegetables remain waterlogged and some agricultural infrastructure has been damaged, at least the autumn seedlings have survived. Liu Gang’s spirits seem somewhat higher than they were over the past two years. “There will be losses, but it is better than last year’s complete wipeout,” he said.
Situated on low-lying ground in Xingshou Town, Changping District, Pingren Farm is highly susceptible to waterlogging. Zhao Fei, who oversees production, explained that the drainage works were inadequate in 2018 and 2021. They dug channels while fighting the heavy rain, but this last-minute scramble failed to stop the crops from being utterly decimated.
It is currently corn harvest season. After this round of storms, 10 mu of organic corn have lodged, representing a loss of 40,000 to 50,000 RMB. Fortunately, organic farms like Pingren typically diversify their planting, so crops such as sweet potatoes, okra, and peanuts were spared.
Over the past few years, to prevent a repeat of the 2018 flooding, Pingren Farm has dug drainage ditches in front of and behind each greenhouse, continuously maintaining and upgrading them. The farm’s internal drainage infrastructure is now quite robust. Beyond physical improvements, the farm learns from every disaster to refine its management. For example, the terrain slopes from north to south. When heavy rains hit last year, the vegetables in the two southern greenhouses were completely waterlogged, so the decision was made to leave the southern plots fallow during the rainy season this year.
Xian Kong, a fellow farmer at Kongkong Valley, showed a touch of impatience when Foodthink contacted them again this year regarding the damage. “You cannot avoid the rain. Whatever mitigation measures you take are pointless,” Xian Kong said, “unless you move away.”
Kongkong Valley is situated in the Pinggu mountainous region, where the higher elevation makes drainage relatively straightforward. Even so, Xian Kong still dug channels when raising beds for planting this year, so that excess water could run off along the road.
Despite these efforts, the aubergines and peppers at Kongkong Valley have largely rotted in the ground and must be dug out. Given the land’s inherently limited yield, there is barely anything left to sell. The only option is to wait for cooler weather to sow the next crop of Chinese cabbage and leafy greens. But this raises another issue: the heavy rains have not only delayed the subsequent planting schedule, but the excessively high soil moisture also means that carrots, radishes, and Chinese cabbage cannot be sown or started in seed trays for the time being.
With the increasing frequency of heavy rain and flooding in the north over recent years, farming communities have begun to recognise the importance of digging drainage ditches. Yet many have been slow to act. For one thing, digging ditches inevitably demands both labour and capital; given that farming profits are already razor-thin, some figure it would be better to simply walk away than to keep pouring money into the ground. Another reason is that drainage has never been a problem a single household can solve on its own; it relies heavily on the upkeep and improvement of surrounding public infrastructure.
Take Pingren Farm as an example: although its internal drainage network is largely in place, actually getting the water out remains an issue. The village began prioritising flood defence on communal land last year and dug drainage channels, but they have quickly become choked with grass and are prone to blockages. For neighbouring strawberry growers who leave their fields fallow over the summer, drainage is hardly a pressing concern, but this infrastructure offers little help to farms cultivating vegetables during those months. Staff at Pingren Farm are left to clear the silt from the ditches themselves, yet when heavy rains strike, the water still backs up and floods back into the fields.
Later, to settle debts, the village collective filled in the pond and mortgaged the land to local private builders for housing development. Meanwhile, lacking any sense of the need for drainage works, every household filled in the ditches crossing their fields and turned them into cropland.
Yet water does not disappear; it always flows downhill. Over the past three years, every rainfall has flooded the few households situated on lower ground. With the village’s water management network gone, there is no one to organise communal ditch-digging, nor any young labour to take on the work. When these homes are flooded, residents have nowhere to complain.
II. When the North Turns South, What Can Farmers Do?
Waterlogged fields, lodged or drowned crops, damaged infrastructure… these represent only the acute damage wrought by heavy rain. Over the longer term, saturated soils will continue to plague growers. Soils with finer pore spaces hold moisture more readily, but their dense aggregate structure also stifles aeration. Kongkong Valley Farm’s land falls into this clay category. Xian Kong has raised his crop ridges considerably, yet remains unable to bypass the problem.
Also set in a mountainous region, Lianxiang Farm in Pingquan, Chengde, enjoys somewhat better conditions. The soil profile was built up by the village during the ‘Learn from Dazhai’ campaign. Originally poor-quality loess, it has been transformed over years of composting into a loam and sandy mix, which infiltrates water more readily than clay. Nevertheless, relentless dampness has oversaturated the soil, damaging plant root systems and reducing their oxygen uptake. Percolating rainwater has also washed nutrients deep into the subsoil, leaving maize deficient in feed and suffering from waterlogged roots.
This raises a crucial question: once extreme weather breaches a certain threshold, can ecological farming still demonstrate its advantages? At the heart of ecological agriculture lies healthy soil—rich in organic matter, adept at retaining moisture while maintaining breathability, and acting as a vital buffer for agriculture in the face of climate change. Yet the ordeals faced by ecological farming peers in recent years indicate that, following such extreme deluges, soils require more time to recuperate than they once did. Given that the frequency of extreme rainfall will likely rise, how should these growers navigate this “new normal”?
Common sense suggests that the north’s typically dry, sunny weather should be ideal for maize pollination. Yet with rising rainfall, the humid air is causing uneven pollination and poor kernel set. Northern growers are also fretting over soil that’s too waterlogged to till or sow. As an old farming proverb goes, “drought invites pests, dampness invites disease.” The added humidity is triggering soft rot in brassicas, while lettuce and Indian lettuce are falling victim to downy mildew. These days, the only crops that reliably thrive are water spinach, amaranth, and disease-resistant spring onions.
Every rainy season, Yingying at Lianxiang Farm worries about root rot in her vegetables and splitting tomatoes. Still, the farm refuses to switch to moisture-loving crops just to cope with the wetter conditions, given that droughts remain far more typical in the north. It’s a constant trade-off. “As for the rain, that’s up to the heavens,” Yingying says. “Any weather that falls short of ideal will inevitably dent yields. All we can do is plan as meticulously as possible and keep producing.” After back-to-back years of crop damage, Liu Gang has taken to planting moisture-loving taro over the past few seasons, introducing a new variety to Beijing consumers.
Even the traditional solar terms are losing their relevance. Last summer’s unrelenting rain kept Pingren Farm’s seeders from getting into the fields, leaving Changping without a single Chinese cabbage sown during the Start of Autumn. In Baoding, Chen Ziyu reports that two weeks of non-stop rain have prevented aubergine and green pepper seeds from germinating, leaving him no choice but to let them rot in the soil and wait for drier weather to sow again.
III. Increased Costs
Alongside the drainage ditch digging and replanting mentioned earlier, reinforcing infrastructure and maintaining crop diversity are standard measures ecological farms take to mitigate flood damage. Whichever approach they prioritise, operating costs inevitably rise.
Xiao Mei from Pingren Farm explains that combating heavy rainfall requires setting aside land for drainage infrastructure. Raising more soil ridges in the fields means compromising on both planting area and crop density. Labour costs also mount: digging and clearing drainage ditches, reinforcing polytunnels, installing waterproof sheeting overhead, and scheduling staff for weather monitoring all add to the expenses. Furthermore, to replace nutrients leached deep into the soil by the downpours, they must apply more liquid enzyme.
Kongkonggu relies entirely on open-field cultivation: no polytunnels, no fertilisers, and no machinery, leaving it even more at the mercy of the weather than Pingren Farm. The advantage is lower overheads, with costs focused almost entirely on labour. However, after heavy rains, weeds surge uncontrollably, driving weeding expenses at Kongkonggu up sharply and consuming eighty per cent of their labour budget.
Even when crops survive the heavy rains, their flavour often suffers. The farmers themselves are disheartened: tomatoes begin to rot as soon as they are harvested, while peppers and aubergines turn watery and bland. This inevitably undermines one of ecological produce’s key selling points: exceptional taste. Xiankong notes that consumers are increasingly drawn to visually appealing vegetables, but natural disasters will always compromise presentation to some degree. Should farms lower their usual standards to sell “headless” celery stalks or halved cauliflower florets? Will consumers embrace “ugly” vegetables? Questions that might seem minor in ordinary times suddenly become critical when survival is at stake.
A growing body of research confirms the link between extreme weather and reduced crop yields—though researchers hardly need to construct complex models to prove it; common sense already makes the connection plain. Do not wait until vegetables are a luxury of the past before you long for these “ugly” crops. Likewise, do not wait until farmers have been driven off the land before you regret failing to offer them support when it mattered. In the face of climate change, a shared crisis, how we sustain food producers and give them the resilience to endure are questions that demand serious reflection from us all.
