Zhou Jiagui and his wife Zhang Xiuying stopped farming at 4.50 pm and set off with a shoulder pole and bucket to fetch water from a fire truck parked 300 meters from their home in Dashiqiao.

All the residents of the village in Southwest China's Yunnan province have been receiving drinking water from the local government's fire service every day since February when a severe drought struck.

Xu Yong, a member of staff at the Anti-drought Emergency Center of Shilin county, said the fire truck arrives at Dashiqiao at 5 pm.

There has been no rainfall in Xueguantun village, in Banqiao Town, Pan county, in Southwest China's Guizhou province, for more than 200 days. More than 2,000 mu of wheat in the village perished as a result. The Pan county government has organized dozens of agricultural technicians to help farmers pull up the dead wheat and plant quick-growth vegetables using water-saving technology in order to limit local farmers' losses.

Wu Qingde, a villager from Xueguantun, said he was unsure whether the technology would work at the beginning but when he saw his vegetable marrows were very healthy on April 15, he thanked the technicians.

"I am very happy that I have learnt the water-saving farming technology, which has helped me decrease the frequency of irrigation and has had an excellent effect on maintaining moisture in the soil," Wu said.

"The technology using plastic film not only saves water for us but also increases the rice crop," said Xie Yiqiao, a famer in Leyi village in Guizhou.

A total of 140,000 agricultural technicians are teaching water-saving technology to farmers in Guizhou. The technique is helping more farmers to battle the worst drought in decades in Southwest China.

Droughts have been occurring increasingly often. The current dry spell has ravaged Southwest China since last autumn, affecting 61.3 million residents and 5 million hectares of crops in Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, Chongqing city and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

High temperatures and a shortage of rainfall earlier this year devastated 4,348,600 hectares of farmland, according to local official statistics.

Despite the worst drought in decades, more farmers look poised to maintain crop production thanks to the widespread use of water-saving techniques.

Yunnan Agricultural Bureau aims to have agricultural experts and technicians teaching farmers how to use water-saving farming technology in 129 counties.

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