What Does Crop Rotation and Fallowing Mean? A Detailed Explanation of Its Role, Significance and Benefits
On November 17, the Ministry of Agriculture held a scheduling meeting in Guizhou on the pilot program for the farmland crop rotation and fallow system. This was the second meeting held by the Ministry of Agriculture in the second half of this year on the pilot program for the farmland crop rotation and fallow system. Holding two meetings on a single topic in such a short period shows the importance of this work.
"Farmland crop rotation and fallowing" is both a new matter and an old one.
As early as the Northern Wei dynasty, "Qimin Yaoshu" recorded such passages as "grain fields must be rotated every year," "hemp needs good fields, and old plots should not be used," and "for all grain fields, green gram and adzuki bean stubble are best, hemp, broomcorn millet, and old hemp stubble come next, and turnip and soybean are lowest." These already pointed out the necessity of crop rotation and described the rotation order used at that time.
At the end of last year, in the explanation of the "Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development," a special explanation was given on "farmland crop rotation and fallowing": taking advantage of the current period of ample grain supply in domestic and international markets, implementing farmland crop rotation and fallowing in some areas is conducive both to allowing farmland to recuperate and to the sustainable development of agriculture, and also to balancing the contradiction between grain supply and demand, stabilizing farmers' incomes, and easing fiscal pressure.
In June of this year, the Ministry of Agriculture, together with the Ministry of Finance and 9 other departments, jointly issued the "Pilot Plan for Exploring the Implementation of a Farmland Crop Rotation and Fallow System," marking the entry of the farmland crop rotation and fallow pilot into the implementation stage. The plan stated: promote crop rotation on 5 million mu in the cold and cool regions of Northeast China and the farming-pastoral ecotone of northern China; implement seasonal fallowing on 1 million mu in the Heilonggang groundwater funnel area of Hebei Province, continuous fallowing on 100,000 mu in the heavy metal polluted area of Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan in Hunan Province, continuous fallowing on 40,000 mu in the rocky desertification area of Southwest China, and continuous fallowing on 20,000 mu in areas of severe ecological degradation in Northwest China. The specific tasks were broken down to the provincial and municipal levels.
For Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia, the four provinces (regions) that bear most of the tasks, the tasks will not be implemented until next year's spring sowing. But details determine success or failure, and several provinces have already begun implementing the tasks. From October 20 to 24, staff from the Agricultural Technology Extension Center of Zhalantun City in Inner Mongolia carried out countryside verification of the pilot and signed cooperation agreements with new types of business entities such as large growers, family farms, and farmers' cooperatives. The pilot tasks remain unchanged for three years, and the rotated plots generally will not be adjusted within 3 years. Through rotation, the nitrogen-fixing and soil-nourishing role of soybean root nodules is brought into play, soil fertility is improved, new high-yield and high-quality food soybean varieties are selected, and the supply of high-quality high-protein soybeans is increased.
Do farmers have enthusiasm for farmland crop rotation and fallowing?
Hebei Province launched a seasonal fallowing pilot as early as 2014, which also laid the foundation among local farmers for further pilot development. Shi Fulin, a farmer in Xiabo Village, Yuke Town, Shenzhou City, Hebei Province, has already piloted "one season of fallowing, one season of rain-fed corn" for three consecutive years. He told reporters, "I can get 500 yuan of subsidy per mu, and my income is basically the same as before. Not planting wheat also saves a lot of labor."
Hebei Province is a pilot province, while Jiangsu Province, which was not included as a pilot province, also allocated 60 million yuan to carry out a certain scale of contiguous pilot demonstrations in parts of southern, central, and northern Jiangsu through county-level unit applications.
Li Guangmeng, a large grain grower in Shinian Village, Lukou Subdistrict, Jiangning District, Nanjing City, has a deep understanding of farmland crop rotation and fallowing. Every two or three years, he lets the land rest for a winter during the wheat season or plants Chinese milk vetch for incorporation into the soil. "Only fertile fields can produce high yields. A poor, thin plot of land cannot grow delicious rice." Li Guangmeng said that his rice yield last year reached 1,440 jin per mu, with a net profit of more than 500 yuan per mu.
In the three provinces of Northeast China, with changes in corn prices, more and more farmers have taken up soybean planting again, their "old trade." Zhao Xianqing, chairman of the Lianyi Agricultural and Sideline Products Cooperative in Dunhua City, Jilin Province, cultivated 7,500 mu of farmland. This year he already adjusted the planting structure and switched 1,800 mu to soybeans. He said, "Returning to the tradition of grain-soybean rotation, rotation reduces pests and diseases, and both soil fertility and per-unit grain yield will increase."
An expert made a vivid metaphor: because China has many people and little land, in order to ensure that people have grain to eat, China's farmland is operating under overload. Carrying out planned crop rotation and fallowing is equivalent to slowing the pace of land output and letting the land slow down and "breathe."