The largest man-made grassland in history is to built at the mouth of the Yellow River at a cost of about 10 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) by the Ministry of Finance and the Shandong provincial government.

Under the ambitious program, grass and trees will cover over 500,000 hectares of the delta of China's second-largest river.

Encouraged by government support, local farmers and enterprises have shown a strong interests in planting grass and trees in the area with many villages specialized in growing clover having come into being during the past two or three years.

Thousands of farmers have joined the business, and most of them have made fortunes through growing grass.

Last year, for example, 62 farmers in Shunhe village of Lijin county in Shandong Province raked in a per capita annual income about 2,760 yuan (US$334) through stockbreeding and growing fodders - four years ago, each farmer could only earn about 539 yuan (US$65) a year.

Well-known enterprises have also started to inject funds in the area to tap the huge business potential of stockbreeding and milk-production.

This year alone witnessed companies such as Nestle and Wahaha, a Hangzhou-based Chinese manufacturer of milk products, investing in Shandong. Milk-production costs are relatively low because the Yellow River brings fertile sullage each year enabling grass to grow easily. Moreover, the clover-growing business not only supplies foodstuff for stock-breeding, but also protects against desertification.

The stock-breeding and grass-growing industries in the area also offer an important lesson for people in the western areas in China, which have a large vast of saline and dry lands similar to the Yellow River mouth area, said experts.

(China Daily October 22, 2002)