<strong>China: Guizhou Provincial Tobacco Industry Invests Heavily in Irrigation</strong>

Source from:  TobaccoChina Online  03/18/2013

The tobacco industry of southwest China's Guizhou Province – the second largest tobacco-producing region in China – invested a total of 10.9 billion yuan (1.73 billion U.S. dollars) in building support facilities for irrigation for tobacco fields in the province from 2005 to the end of 2012, achieving great successes.

The construction of support facilities for irrigation over the seven-year period has covered 6.03 million mu (402,000 hectares), or 67 percent, of the basic tobacco fields and more than 1 million tobacco growing farm households in the province, according to data released recently by Guizhou Provincial Water Resources Administration.

It was reported that as a result of construction of support facilities for irrigation, the tobacco industry of Guizhou has seen its capacity to resist natural disasters obviously strengthened, together with continued improvement of the quality of leaf tobacco, and continued increase of income of tobacco growers from tobacco growing.

In the 1996-2010 five-year period, the annual leaf tobacco production quotas issued to Guizhou Province by the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration grew to 5.93 million dan (296,500 tons) to 7.0288 million dan (351,440 tons), and leaf tobacco production in the province was in a trend of steady growth for consecutive years.

Besides, the construction of support facilities for irrigation has contributed to solving the difficulty in water use for rotation of crops.

In 2013, the tobacco industry of Guizhou will invest 1.5 billion yuan (238 million U.S. dollars) for completing the construction of irrigation projects for 550,000 mu (36,667 hectares) of tobacco fields, and starting the construction of 10 water source projects in the province. Enditem