One Million Mu of Cotton Starts to Be Sowed in Xinjiang's Yuli County

BEIJING--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Spring sowing of a total of 1 million mu (66,667 hectares) of cotton in Yuli, northwest China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region recently came into full swing. The work will be done before the end of April.

Autopilot tractors empowered by China's home-developed BeiDou Satellite Navigation System are seen busy farming in the fields in the county.

Yuli County has made constant efforts to advance agricultural development and improve farmers' income over the recent years. Transferring land to farmers' cooperatives and agricultural enterprises, and integrating scattered small fields into large pieces, the county has fully realized the mechanization and intensive management of cotton production, and thus effectively improved the quality of cotton.

Yuli County, located in the middle-to-lower reaches of the Tarim River, suffers from water scarcity. Therefore, the dry seeding and wet emergence technique was quite popular there, which not only saves water, but also improves the emergence rate of cotton.

"This year I'll plant 4,000 mu of cotton by machine with the dry sowing and wet emergence technique, as it reduces water and fertilizer consumption, and improves production. We have completed about a quarter of the total workload so far, and the rest will be done before April 15," said Zhang Lin, a cotton grower in Tongqike Village, Xingping Township, Yuli County.

Yuli County is a production base of premium commodity cotton. It is home to over 10 major agricultural machinery cooperatives that own more than 6,300 large tractors and 5,200 cotton planters. Last year, 96.7 percent of the cotton in the county was planted by machines.