Yang Jian, director of the Development Planning Department in the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, worries about the impact of China’s desertification on food supplies.
Yang said at a recent news conference that China needs to grow 500 million tonnes of grain every year. Though the country is currently self-sufficient in food, production of most grains is slipping, largely because about a million acres of arable land have been lost to urban sprawl over the last decade, according to official reports. Though Yang’s ministry has reserved 405,000 hectares of land for agriculture, much of it is in areas affected by desertification.
If the desert eats substantially into China’s arable land, Beijing will be forced to import grains. This would raise world food prices, a potentially devastating development for the 350 million people worldwide who live on less than US$1 a day, Yang said.
The government is trying a number of strategies to battle the creeping sands.
Farmer Li said local officials have ordered his family to switch from growing cotton to planting trees in the hope that reforesting the desert’s periphery will help contain it. Many counties in Gansu have restricted herders from grazing their animals on damaged grasslands, and cities such as Beijing are creating “shelter belts” of grass and trees around themselves to prevent topsoil from loosening.
China is even trying to water arid regions by seeding clouds with silver iodide, which creates “artificial” rain. The chemical, which is sprayed into clouds by plane or cannon shell, cools clouds so their moisture condenses and falls as rain.
So far, the Chinese government has equipped about 35,000 farmers with antique anti-aircraft guns and trained them to fire shells loaded with silver into passing clouds.
Despite such innovations, China’s deserts are stubbornly expanding.
In the western province of Xinjiang, the Tarim River, which began to run dry in 1972 following construction of a reservoir in its middle, has almost totally disappeared. As a result, the large poplar groves around it that once served as a barrier between two deserts, the Taklamakan and the Kumtag, are disappearing and the two parched swathes of sand are merging.
The stubbornness of the sands has led many people to find ways of making the most of their new proximity to the desert. In Dunhuang and Beijing, local entrepreneurs have created “sand parks” where city kids can ride camels, toboggan down dunes, and drive SUVs.
“It’s a tourist attraction,” said an official at the park outside Dunhuang. “We have to make the best of our conditions.”
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