Agricultural irrigation in China

As the most populous country in the world, China always faces challenges for food security. The country must feed its 1.3 billion people with less than 10% of the world's arable land (Wu et al. 2010). Over the last 60 years, the population of China has increased from 0.5 to 1.3 billion, the total irrigated area has increased almost monotonically from 15.9 million ha (39.3 million ac) to 61.7 million ha (152.5 million ac), and grain output has increased from 113.2 billion kg (249.6 billion lb) to 571.2 billion kg (1,259.5 billion lb) (figure 1).