Time to celebrate as dreaded white gives way to pure gold

Agricultural innovation transforms fields once blighted by salt flats. Zhao Ruixue reports

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As Li Dianquan, a farmer, busily refills a seeder, he says: "Fifteen years ago nothing would grow in this place other than sparse cotton with pitifully low yields.

"The land was considered worthless. Fellow farmers leased it to me for 50 yuan ($7) a mu (0.067 hectare)."

Yet one day early last month on the very land Li is describing, in Dongying, Shandong province, seeders were moving up and down the fields planting wheat seeds. It was hard to imagine that in 2010 this vast expanse in Huanghekou town of Kenli district was a stark, white expanse of saline-alkaline land.

Nestled on the shores of the Bohai Sea where the meandering Yellow River empties into the ocean, Dongying's landscape has been shaped by an unusual geographical legacy.

The gradual retreat of seawater over time left behind salt deposits that have created 227,330 hectares of saline-alkaline land. This area accounts for 38 per cent of the total saline-alkaline land in the province.

"In the autumn harvest season Shandong's landscape resembles a colourful palette, but the last colour we want to see is the white of saline-alkaline land," said Wang Jingdong, deputy director of the Shandong Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.