China's agricultural sector learns to adapt

Some changes are striking. Other changes are more striking, but not so when looked at, such as the farms in the northern part of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, where I worked in the 1970s.

I took a trip there recently. They are the same farms. I used to know them so well; the roads, canals, and large swaths of green crops extending all the way to the horizon.

But take a closer look at them: there are no more workers carrying spades on their shoulders, busy running up and down the canal. The only farmworker I met was resting in his Toyota Corolla outside a computer-controlled pumping station connected to a regional drip irrigation network, "a system taught by the Israelis".