Inner Mongolia added to food security pilot

In a move to bolster the country's food security, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region has been included in the national pilot initiative for the comprehensive utilization of arable land resources, particularly saline-alkaline land.

The region has 11.5 million hectares of arable land, with saline-alkaline land accounting for more than 9 percent.

The regional department of agriculture and animal husbandry plans to integrate the comprehensive utilization of saline-alkaline land into the broader strategy of establishing a national key agricultural and animal products production base.

The department said it will adopt the idea of "selecting good seeds to suit the land and improving land to benefit the growth of seeds", to promote nine integrated technologies for saline-alkaline land utilization in the three major irrigation areas of Hetao, Tumochuan and the West Liaohe River, covering some 178,000 hectares.

At the Hetao irrigation area, measures have been taken to transform unevenly planted mild saline-alkaline land into fertile fields characterized by "drought-resistant irrigation, flood drainage capacity and reduced salinity", Xinhua News Agency reported.

At Hinggan League, annual production of saline-alkaline-tolerant rice has exceeded 7,500 kilograms per hectare for five consecutive years, said Wang Shigang, leader of the experts' working station. He said the league has a large area of salinealkaline land, not suitable for crops to grow, and the chances of land desertification, waste and pollution are high.

The station has expanded salinealkaline farmland, which used to be barren, from 64 hectares in 2019 to 200 hectares last year, and has realized stable production of rice with "strong adaptability, good disease resistance, drought and cold tolerance and lodging resistance", according to Wang.

He added researchers have cultivated suitable seeds, added minerals to adjust the land, and managed the plantation process with various agricultural technologies.

"China has a large area of salinealkaline land, which will become a wasteland if not dealt with. It's great to see more saline-alkaline land being turned into arable land. The country's efforts to expand the use of saline-alkaline land are of great significance in food security and ecology," he added.

By 2024, Inner Mongolia expects to include 1.05 million hectares of saline-alkaline land in its arable land reserve. By 2025, it will set up 20 water and salt monitoring stations to build a related database.

As one of the five pilot provincial-level regions besides the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, and the provinces of Jilin, Shandong and Hebei, it will receive support from the central government in terms of funding and technology.