It is just at the height of the "three summer months" when farmers
of north China are busy with "three farming activities" of
planting, harvesting and field management. In the Wuqing District
of Tianjin, farmers enjoy more leisure time after finishing summer
harvesting this year than they used to. The Ministry of Agriculture
is popularizing a demonstration project called "protective
cultivation" in the area, which is expected to simplify the "summer
planting" and "field management" for farmers following "summer
harvesting."
Hu
Wei, general secretary of Tianjin Agricultural Machinery
Association, said that Wuqing District, Baodi District and Ninghe
County under the jurisdiction of Tianjin have been listed by the Ministry of
Agriculture among the country's first group of demonstration
areas to conduct the "Protective Cultivation Technological
Demonstration Project." The central government is to invest 500,000
yuan (US$60,482.9) finance subsidies to each demonstration area for
purchasing special machines for the protective cultivation. Each
key operational zone will cover 10,000 mu (1 hectare = 15 mu).
Basic-level agricultural machinery service organs will encourage
and support farmers to adopt protective cultivation technology via
a unified organization, in order to effectively solve the problems
of drought, soil erosion and sandstorms in dry farmland, as well as
to promote the sustainable development of agriculture. Currently,
those three areas have been actively carrying out the preparatory
work for the implementation of the project.
The Ministry of Agriculture starts the overall protective
cultivation demonstration project this year. The general plan
consists of two stages with the emphasis on gradual reform of the
traditional cultivation method in dry farmland in northern China.
In the first stage (2002-05), two protective cultivation belts ---
one is the protective cultivation belt enclosing Beijing and
Tianjin, the other relates to the source of sandstorms --- will be
built, with Beijing and Tianjin being the central area. In the
second stage, it will take seven to 10 years to wholly conduct the
protective cultivation in the north, northeast and northwest of
China, contributing to increasing the agricultural benefits,
farmers' income, prevention and control of sandstorm and the
sustainable development of agriculture.
The Ministry of Agriculture has designated 38 counties as the first
group of demonstration areas distributed across north Hebei, north
Shanxi, west Liaoning, east Gansu, Beijing and Tianjin. By giving
priority to the construction of key demonstration areas, gradually
enlarging and merging these areas, and combining other ecosystem
construction measures such as the reforesting of the cultivated
land launched by the central government, the deteriorating
situation of the agricultural ecosystem in north China's dry
farmland is expected to improve.
What Is the Protective Cultivation?
According to agricultural experts, protective cultivation is a new
cultivation method for dry farmland, mainly including four aspects
of no-tillage sowing and fertilizing, deep plowing, controlling
weeds and stalks and field management. The core of the cultivation
method is no-tillage sowing and the main operation is done by
machinery.
Protective cultivation originated in the United States in the
1930s. So far, the United States, Canada and Australia have almost
fully adopted the idea supported by mechanization.
In
north China, the cultivation method of turning over soil by
turn-plow and laying bare the soil has lasted to this day. Due to
deep plowing and raking intensively, the soil structure is ravaged,
the content of the manure made from fermented night soil has
diluted by water, and the bared surface soil intensifies the
rampant sandstorms.
After nine years of successive experiments and research conducted
in Shanxi Province, scientists from the Agriculture University of
China has worked out a set of protective cultivation technological
systems suited to Chinese conditions. The result shows that,
compared with the traditional cultivation method, mechanized
protective cultivation can lower surface runoff by 60 percent,
decrease soil erosion by 80 percent, and reduce flying sands by 60
percent. Meanwhile, it can enrich the water content of soil in
fallow seasons and increase the utilization ratio of manure of
fermented night soil with water added, and thus shorten the
production procedure and increase the output of crops.
(China.org.cn by Zhang Tingting, July 15, 2002)