Dryland protective farming will be extended and applied within 7
to 10 years across the entire north of China, according to a
Sino-Australian Dryland Protective Farming Seminar held on August
17 to 20 in Lanzhou, capital of the northwest Gansu Province.
Sponsored by the Protective Farming Research Center of the
Ministry of Agriculture and Farming Mechanization Committee under
the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering, the seminar
attracted Australian and domestic experts.
Liu Ming, vice director of the Farming Mechanization Department
of the Ministry of Agriculture, said the demonstrative fields of
dryland protective farming had been built in 58 counties in north
China’s 13 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. It is
expected demonstrative fields will be enlarged to 15.2 million
mu (about 1 million hectares) by 2005. And the figure will
reach 150 million mu (10 million hectares) by 2010, as one
third of dryland farmers in north China practice protective
farming.
Different from traditional farming that plows the earth deeply,
protective farming decreases plowing as much as possible and leaves
crop straw and stubble in the earth. The special implement stubble
seeding machines can fertilize the earth deep down while seeding.
And herbicide and shallow plowing are utilized in weeding.
Protective farming can not only save work and farming costs, but
also prevent earth erosion from water and wind. Experts said its
popularization is important to agricultural development and
sandstorm prevention in north China. Li Hongwen, vice director of
the Protective Farming Research Center of the Ministry of
Agriculture, said their experiments found that protective farming
will reduce 30 percent of dust rising from the fields, and increase
10 to 15 percent of the water contained in earth and field
yields.
Protective farming originated in America. In the 1930s, the west
of America faced serious sandstorms. During the control of these
storms, it was found that there was earth in fields where plowing
had not taken place, where straw and stubble had made it difficult
for strong winds to strip the earth bare. This lack of plowing
resulted in better harvests, while deeply plowed fields did not
grow crops, and seeds and earth were stripped by the wind. Thus
non-plow farming appeared and developed into present protective
farming. To date, 95 percent of American fields and 70 percent of
Canadian and Australian fields apply protective farming.
As early as 10 years ago, China had started to research and
apply protective farming, but with no implements, farmers worked
only with their hands. Hard work and little harvests made it hard
for them to accept it. In recent years, as non-plow seeding
machines and other advanced implements have been developed and
demonstrative fields have given good examples, a new producing
model has been gradually accepted by farmers.
Protective farming also uses chemical herbicide. Some experts
think this will create pollution, so non-chemical herbicides are
being researched.
(China.org.cn by Feng Yikun, August 22, 2003)