Chapter 31: Xiangtian Mountain

Combining with Director Yan's introduction, Guo Yang stared at the map for a long time before asking, "Which two districts and counties have the most heavily saline-alkali farmland?"

Director Yan smiled bitterly and wondered why Mr. Guo was still focusing on the heavily saline-alkali land.

But it still has to be said: "Minqin County and Jinta County have the most severely saline-alkali farmland, which are also the two counties with the most saline-alkali farmland in the province."

"But Mr. Guo, although it is saline-alkali farmland, most of it has been abandoned. Now it is a barren land that even livestock dislike, and it is difficult for seeds to germinate."

"It would be too expensive to grow pasture in such places and improve saline-alkali land."

Senior official Li Changlin also advised: "Yes, we obviously have a lot of lightly saline-alkali arable land, we can start with the easy ones and then move on to the difficult ones. Why do we have to bite the hard bones right away?"

Li Changlin and others hope that Alfalfa Company can achieve success in Long Province, which will also be beneficial to their future investment promotion.

Once a project fails, it not only leaves behind a mess, but also deals a heavy blow to the already difficult process of attracting investment.

But despite their incredulous looks, Guo Yang still firmly chose Minqin County and Jinta County as inspection points.

Minqin County is the original body's hometown, located in the northeast of the Hexi Corridor and the lower reaches of the Shiyang River Basin. It has a dry climate, scarce rainfall and strong evaporation.

Surrounded by the Tengger and Badain Jaran deserts on the east, west and north, it is one of the driest and most severely affected areas by desertification in my country.

Over the past 20 years, with the sudden decrease in surface fresh water inflow, repeated pumping and concentration of groundwater and the use of highly mineralized groundwater for irrigation have resulted in the county's saline-alkali farmland area reaching 75 mu.

In addition, there are large amounts of saline-alkali wasteland.

In recent years, although there are no projects to support them, the people who are severely harmed by saline-alkali have continuously adopted measures such as planting salt-tolerant crops, covering the ground with film, returning straw to the fields, and removing sand and alkali to carry out transformation.

However, due to the lack of systematic planning, the lack of the concept of sustainable development and systematic management, the lack of certain financial guarantees, and the irrational development and utilization of water resources, soil salinization is still increasing.

The saline-alkali farmland area in Jinta County is also 60 mu, mainly including two types: salinized irrigated soil and salinized tidal soil.

All layers of the soil generally contain soluble harmful salts, which have great impacts on crop growth. In mild cases, crop growth is inhibited; in severe cases, seedlings emerge unevenly, making it difficult to protect seedlings, or even die or fail to emerge.

These two districts and counties have also been long-standing problems in Long Province.

Many investors tried to avoid it, but Alfalfa Agriculture Company headed by Guo Yang chose this area stubbornly.

This caught all departments of the Long Province government off guard. When they were preparing supporting policies, they had no plans for these two counties at all.

This made them miss the opportunity in the subsequent negotiations on supporting policies.

The saline-alkali land transformation project is a huge systematic project with large investment, long time span, strong policy orientation and wide coverage.

Moreover, the country has not yet issued relevant laws and regulations and supporting policy support.

The contracting policy for saline-alkali arable land and saline-alkali wasteland is imperfect in order to avoid doing harm to others in the future.

Guo Yang actively fought for the ownership issue after the saline-alkali land was rehabilitated.

However, because the final project scope has not yet been determined, the nature of the saline-alkali land cannot be determined. There is a big difference between saline-alkali wasteland and saline-alkali arable land.

The longest contract period for saline-alkali wasteland is 70 years, while the longest contract period for saline-alkali arable land is only 30 years.

After learning about this policy, Guo Yang immediately wanted to contract all the saline-alkali wasteland.

But at this time, Dr. Zhou from the Planning and Design Institute stepped forward and asked him to conduct an on-site inspection first.

In Dr. Zhou's words, the difficulty of dealing with the severely saline-alkali wasteland will put great pressure on Alfalfa's capital chain.

After determining the approximate direction of the project site and the framework for land contracting, Guo Yang proposed supporting road and water conservancy project support to the Longnan Provincial Government.

To be rich, build roads first.

Whether it is Minqin County or Jinta County, the transportation conditions and canal construction in both counties are not optimistic. Most of the saline-alkali wastelands are located in remote wilderness with sparse populations, and naturally there are no supporting engineering roads and water conservancy projects.

Whether it is the early stage of saline-alkali land management and development, or the subsequent forage planting, production, processing and sales, it is inseparable from convenient transportation conditions.

As for water conservancy projects.

First, it is to reduce canal leakage to avoid the formation of secondary salinity in the soil;

Secondly, in order to ensure reasonable irrigation in the later stage, the number and amount of irrigation can be reasonably arranged, thin irrigation and shallow irrigation can be implemented, flooding and series irrigation can be avoided, and river water or deep well water with low salt content should be used for irrigation as much as possible.

Production and engineering roads and water conservancy projects are the rigid supporting policy conditions that Guo Yang proposed to the provincial government.

During the fierce confrontation, Guo Yang even suggested that if Long Province could not provide road and water conservancy facilities, he would look for other provinces that could provide them.

He even suggested that the Longnan provincial government should provide certain drip irrigation facilities.

Helplessly, the Long Province Government had to agree to Guo Yang’s request for roads and water conservancy facilities.

In addition, because no one is interested in saline-alkali wasteland, it is unknown how much money will be needed to fully develop it.

Therefore, the Longnan Provincial Government also made great concessions on the contract price. The price of saline-alkali wasteland is 50 yuan per mu, and the price of saline-alkali arable land ranges from 100 to 200 yuan per mu depending on the degree of salinization.

After a simple calculation, the Longnan Provincial Government will need to invest nearly 6000 million yuan in the initial road construction alone, plus the subsequent water conservancy facilities costs.

This infrastructure investment with a very low rate of return will require at least 100 million yuan.

So, agriculture is difficult.

It feels like nothing has been done yet, but a lot of money has been spent.

……

Long Province, Jiuquan.

It was the first time that Guo Yang saw Xiang Tianshan, whom he had been curious about for a long time.

His temples are gray and his face is tanned from the sun, but the wrinkles on his face are still clearly visible.

How dark is it?

There is no better way to describe it than with a long-standing saying.

"From a distance he looked like a beggar, from closer he looked like a charcoal burner, but when I asked he turned out to be from the agricultural technology station."

There is no front-line worker in agriculture who is not corrupt.

Especially in June and July, the sun will make you darker after one day of exposure.

"Mr. Xiang, I'm sorry to trouble you to go with me for an on-site investigation this time." Guo Yang said sincerely.

The first time he saw Xiang Tianshan, he felt that he was a down-to-earth person.

"Mr. Guo, you can't default on the technical service fee you agreed to pay."

"But I really don't recommend you to grow alfalfa in Jinta and Minqin. You should go to Jinchang or Qingyang and Huining in eastern Gansu, which are suitable places to grow forage grass."

Guo Yang smiled. Since Jinta County was adjacent to Jiuquan, he invited Xiang Tianshan to provide technical guidance for the purpose of technical services.

But the actual purpose was tacitly understood by both of them.

(End of this chapter)