Xinjiang’s 400-hectare desert wheat harvest is a milestone in China’s push for food security

China, with the most ‘desertified’ land in the world, seeks to boost crop yield in the face of harsh conditions and climate change

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In eastern China, growers harvest a wheat crop that uses various technologies and agricultural methods to produce wheat at the edge of the harsh Taklimakan Desert. Photo: Weibo/日照网

Published: 6:00pm, 18 Jun 2024Updated: 7:01pm, 18 Jun 2024

Chinese farmers have grown wheat in the country’s largest desert amid ongoing efforts to turn arid regions into fertile soil and the drive to strengthen food security.

The first harvest of a 400-hectare (988-acre) wheat crop is under way in the southwestern edge of the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in western China, according to state media.

China has the largest area of desertified land in the world. Its almost 300 million hectares of desertified land – land that has been degraded because of a variety of factors – affects the production and lives of more than 400 million people, according to official figures.

Wang Jianjun, deputy manager of Xinjiang Wuzheng Green Agriculture Development Company, said the project’s unit yield exceeded expectations.

“This batch of wheat weighs 825 grams per litre, meeting the standard for first-class wheat of the wheat yield measurement, and the yield exceeds 260kg per mu,” Wang told China News Service this week. A mu is a unit of measurement commonly used in China, with 15 mu equivalent to 1 hectare and about 6 mu equalling 1 acre.

He said the company aimed for a 400kg unit output by improving plantation technologies.