Hydrosocial Governance and Agricultural Development in Semi-Arid Northwest China

Historically, the relationship between rainfall and the food peasants ate in the Zuli valley of northwest China was fairly straightforward. 1 Rain fell. It was absorbed by the soil in situ. Some of it evaporated. Some of it went to nourish the roots of crops. In general those crops - spring wheat, millet and pulses - fed those who tended them. The volume and timing of rainfall were the primary determinants of the success or failure of a harvest. However, over the past three decades this direct connection between rainfall and what people ate has been interrupted at several points by state-backed development interventions that have changed the way peasants relate to both agricultural water and food, and in the process rescaled the political, technical and economic institutions that mediate the relationship between people and water.