Saline-alkali land turned into fertile farming area

Swaths of formerly infertile land have been transformed in the coastal areas of Dongying in Shandong province, promising record harvests later this year. Song Nianfei, head of a local saline-alkali land improvement project, is expecting a bumper green wheat harvest around June 15.

With his 45.9 hectares of wheat at the critical grain-filling stage, Song's projected yield is approximately 6 metric tons per hectare — a dramatic turnaround for land that was once a barren, salt-crusted wasteland.

Located less than 15 kilometers from the Bohai Sea in the Yong'an area of the Dongying Economic and Technological Development Zone, the area is typical coastal land, formed by tidal deposits, resulting in high soil salinity, a low-lying terrain and chronic water shortages — a severe piece of coastal saline-alkali land.

The much-needed transformation began in September 2022, when the central government approved a pilot program for the comprehensive utilization of saline-alkali land and other reserve arable land resources. Dongying, situated at the mouth of the Yellow River, was selected as the first and only pilot city in Shandong province. In April 2024, construction began in Yong'an area.

The project team focused on two main strategies by improving soil quality and repeatedly testing which crops could survive.

On the soil front, they introduced several measures. "We divided the land into small, grid-like plots with separate irrigation and drainage channels to manage water more precisely. We also plowed crop stalks back into the fields to increase organic matter," said Song. "As a result, soil salinity has been gradually pushed down, while organic content has steadily risen."

On the crop front, the team experienced several failures. Early attempts to grow sorghum failed, and corn planted under plastic mulch also proved unsuccessful. Drawing on support from universities and research institutes, they eventually settled on rice.

"Rice is naturally tolerant of salinealkali conditions, and flooding the fields helps suppress salt while improving organic matter," Song said, adding it combines soil improvement with farming and achieves long-term land nourishment. The team specifically chose the most saline plot in the area for the trial. By June 2025, rice had successfully emerged on the pilot field.

Today, the area utilizes a rice-wheat rotation system. The pH of the soil has dropped from 9.8 to below 8.5, and organic matter content has risen from less than 0.3 percent to over 1 percent.

In another area in the city's Kenli subdistrict, a 200-hectare stretch of wheat now forms a continuous green landscape, a scene hard to associate with the saline-alkali land it once was. "In the past, crops only grew on the higher ground. The lower-lying areas grew nothing," said Wang Hongguang, Party secretary of Zhaowu village, Kenli subdistrict. He said that some parts of the land had been left idle for more than a decade due to high salinity levels.

During the pilot program, Shandong has consistently based its approach on the region's actual soil, water and climatic conditions.

"The coastal saline-alkali land in Dongying is complex in soil conditions with soil salt content varying widely, so soil treatment differs from plot to plot," said Li Qiusheng, deputy director of the Shandong Development and Reform Commission. He added that only by implementing precise measures tailored to local conditions can the overall effectiveness of land remediation be improved.

The province has developed seven mature and typical treatment models suitable for coastal saline-alkali land. "Among these, a specialized salt leaching and management model which not only ensures effective salt removal and suppression, but greatly increases the usable farmland from the same area has proven to be highly suitable for wider application," Li said.

According to official calculations, the pilot program in Dongying has added about 2,320 hectares of new arable land.

Zhu Fengzhen contributed to this story.

zhaoruixue@chinadaily.com.cn