Millet Grown in the Desert: Saving Water and Making Money
On January 13, Lin Xinghui, Party secretary of Menggentala Gacha in Barunbieli Town, Alxa Left Banner, Alxa League, Inner Mongolia, made a special trip to Beijing. He wanted to see with his own eyes his own desert millet launched on the e-commerce platform——COFCO Womai.“With a sales channel, this year's millet purchase price has already risen to 4.2 yuan per jin.” Lin Xinghui told reporters with a smile, his face, reddened by the sun, glowing even more brightly now.
In fact, Lin Xinghui has only been growing millet for the past two or three years. In order to ease the increasingly serious desertification in the Alxa area while ensuring the livelihoods of local farmers and herders, starting in 2009, the Alxa SEE Ecological Association supported local farmers in planting low-water-consumption foxtail millet, replacing crops such as corn and wheat that had previously been grown in large quantities.
“We had only grown foxtail millet to feed sheep, not foxtail millet for people to eat. At first, no one dared to grow it.” Lin Xinghui was the first in Menggentala Gacha to grow water-saving foxtail millet. He said that because he had cooperated with the association on a drip irrigation under film project, he boldly planted five or six mu, “even if the crop was poor, it would not fail completely.”
Although he did not understand the techniques and the first year's harvest was average, Lin Xinghui discovered that “growing millet saves too much water.” He made a comparison for reporters: growing corn requires watering 6 times per season, about 800 cubic meters per mu; growing millet requires watering only 3 times per season, about 400 cubic meters.
In the Alxa oasis area, agricultural irrigation mainly relies on pumping groundwater that seeps down from the Helan Mountains. “Wells have already been drilled to 120 meters underground.” Lin Xinghui said that although water itself costs no money, pumping requires electricity, and each watering costs about 18 yuan per mu in electricity.
In 2014, he not only planted all 70 mu of his family's land with water-saving foxtail millet, but also transferred in 20 mu of land in the village. That year there was a severe drought, but the average yield of foxtail millet still reached 630 jin per mu. “Although it is not as high as corn's yield of 1,700-2,000 jin, foxtail millet has a high unit price, with a purchase price of 4.2 yuan per jin, 4 times that of corn.” Lin Xinghui said that over the year, 90 mu of land earned nearly 230,000 yuan, averaging 2,600 yuan per mu.
⟦NL> The seed was Zhangzagu No. 5, introduced uniformly by SEE. SEE provided the technical organic production operating procedures, and both sowing and harvesting were mechanized. With more foxtail millet being grown, how could it be sold? Through cooperation with enterprises, SEE pushed “desert millet” onto e-commerce platforms and processed it into ready-to-eat foods, exploring a sustainable ecological protection chain.
Seeing that water-saving foxtail millet made money and that the sales problem had also been solved, the villagers all planned to follow suit. “It is estimated that in this year's spring sowing, the foxtail millet planting area in Menggentala Gacha will exceed 1,000 mu.” Lin Xinghui himself also planned to transfer in another 60 mu of land.
Saving 400 cubic meters of water per mu and increasing income by 500 yuan per household, the exploration of “desert millet” has attracted the attention and support of the local government. Feng Yuzhen, head of Alxa League, told reporters that if 30,000 mu of the 60,000 mu of cultivated land in the Yaoba Oasis of Alxa were planted with water-saving crops mainly consisting of foxtail millet, groundwater extraction and recharge balance across the entire oasis would be achieved. It is reported that Alxa League will cooperate with SEE to jointly promote 5,000 mu of water-saving foxtail millet this year, and strive to expand the promoted area to more than 20,000 mu in the next 3-5 years.