Farmers learn saving the soil lifts income
Print Edition
PAN Renguo, a farmer in northeast China, has come to know the value of his organic vegetables.
The chili peppers and cabbages grown by Pan and his fellow villagers sold well this summer, even to customers more than 1,000 kilometers away in Beijing and Hebei Province, earning gross revenue of 36 million yuan (US$5.2 million) for their cooperative in Heilongjiang Province.
Their village in Suihua City was one of the pilot areas selected last year to promote black soil protection through erosion control and increased organic matter in the soil.
“With the use of organic fertilizers, the chili peppers contain more vitamin C and taste good,” said Pan, president of the Xinnuo fruit and vegetable cooperative.
The black soil in China’s northeast, which was once fertile, has been degraded by excessive use of chemical fertilizers and long-term cultivation, threatening stable output.
In Hailun City, the level of organic matter in local black soil has fallen to 4 percent from 5.8 percent 30 years ago, said Wang Yanbing, an agricultural official. “If the trend continues, crops will not grow well anymore,” he warned.
More than half of the cultivated soil faces erosion problems in Hailun.
Black soil in other parts of the region has also seen organic matter decrease.
In 2015, China launched a pilot black soil protection project in 17 grain-producing counties in the northeast, which also includes the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and the provinces of Jilin and Liaoning.
The scheme is aimed at improving the fertility of degraded soil.
Many farmers like Pan have benefited from the project as crops such as organic rice earn them more, while also decreasing use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, officials said.
Heilongjiang plans to cut the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides by 10 percent, 20 percent and 30 percent respectively by 2020 from 2015 levels.
New technology has been developed to meet the goals. In many paddies in Suihua, insect traps have been installed to kill pests, while tools have been upgraded to reduce the use of fertilizers.
But high costs have affected farmers’ willingness to protect the soil.
For example, deep plowing is good for the restoration of soil and burying straw, but it means higher costs.
More research is needed to develop technology for protecting black soil, such as rapid composting under low temperatures, said Han Xiaozeng, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Land and Resources say about 16.1 percent of surveyed land suffers from excessive pollution and 19.4 percent of surveyed arable land had levels of pollution higher than the national standard.
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