Beidahuang Uses Technology to Protect Heilongjiang’s Black Soil

What changed

Beidahuang Group, one of China’s biggest farming operators, says it has completed more than 90% of its planned autumn land preparation in Heilongjiang, using machinery, soil testing and fixed monitoring points to protect black-soil farmland.

Its program includes returning all harvested straw to the soil, upgrading 1,079 harvesting-machine track units at a cost of 250 million yuan, and testing 1,149 soil samples at Jiansanjiang. The group says its straw-use efficiency remains above 95%, while average soil organic matter is estimated at 49.9 grams per kilogram, 4 grams higher than in 2021.

Why it matters

This is farmland management treated as infrastructure, not as a once-a-year harvest chore. Beidahuang manages 48.744 million mu of stable farmland, making small changes in soil quality significant across a very large agricultural base.

At Yunguang Farm, machinery chops and spreads straw before deep ploughing reaches 35 centimetres. The aim is practical: loosen compacted soil and improve its ability to hold air, water and nutrients. At Jiansanjiang, 702 fixed monitoring points and field-specific fertiliser recommendations replace the old habit of applying nutrients by rough experience.

That shift is the most important part of the story. The machinery is visible; the measurement system is what could make the gains repeatable. Jiansanjiang is targeting annual soil-organic-matter growth of 0.03% and a regional level of 4.2% by 2030.

The reported improvement is encouraging, but it cannot yet be assigned entirely to this program. What is clear is that Beidahuang is trying to make soil protection measurable, routine and large enough to matter.