Efforts to Control Land Degradation

During the Ninth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development, the state demanded “to achieve basic self-sufficiency in food based on domestic resources” with a self-sufficiency rate of not less than 95% and a net import volume of not more than 5% of domestic consumption. At the same time, the reserved cultivated land resources should be developed and reclaimed for more than 300,000 aha years to make up for the occupation of cultivated land in the same period. In addition, it is also very important to maintain a stable cultivated area and a long-term stable grain crop planting area of about 110 million hectares. The state plan for increasing grain production in Inner Mongolia is 3.5 million tons. Therefore, during the “Ninth Five-Year Plan” period, Inner Mongolia put forward the planning target of transforming 28 million mu in central China and building 4.8 million mu of “wasteland suitable for farming.” The White Paper on China’s Grain Problem also proposes the use of non-grain resources, believing that China’s grasslands and mountain areas are rich in resources and have great potential for development. If most of them are built on artificial grassland, the level of grassland animal husbandry will be improved. China’s mountainous areas account for 70% of the total land area and have good conditions for the development of woody food. The prospect of increasing woody food is also very broad. Therefore, the scale of grassland construction and forage grass base construction in Inner Mongolia also expanded greatly during the “Ninth Five-Year Plan.”