Chen Dong, a farmer in Yongdetang Village of Ulanqab League in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, owns four milch cows that earned 14,400 yuan ( about 1,750 US dollars) in net profit for his family of six.

"I am thinking of buying another five cows by using loans. Now I am very confident of leading a contended life in future," said Chen.
"In the past, I had about 2.67 hectares of sandy land, but I could not feed my wife and children due to low yields."

Since he returned his fragile farmland to pastures in 2001, Chen has received 900 kg of food grain subsidized by the government every year. Meanwhile, the county government also financed him to buy dairy cows in a bid to encourage his family to go in for livestock farming.

Nowadays, Yongdetang Village, having raised more than 200 milch cows and preparing to buy another 100, is a small remnant of the Ulanqab League of Inner Mongolia.

The Ulanqab League once had wilderness of luxurious grassland, but ever since the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), vast tracts of grassland were turned into cropland to feed the swollen population, while local ecological environment began to deteriorate.

In 1994, the farmland acreage in Ulanqab League reached 1.6 million hectares. But 90 percent suffered erosion and were on the fringes of desert. The Ulanqab has been blamed as a major sand source for sandstorms in Beijing and Tianjin municipalities.

The League has become the destitute area of Inner Mongolia.
In the year 2000, the Ulanqab League returned a total of 800, 000 hectares of fragile land from farmland to pastures. Meanwhile, grain yields of the remaining farmland increased dramatically, along with the introduction of advanced agricultural technologies.

Nowadays, with the denuded hills in the Ulanqab turned green, farmers in its 11 counties of the Ulanqab are leading relatively affluent lives after converting from grain crop planting to livestock breeding. The Ulanqab League now has more than 80,000 milch cows, each of which generates 3,000-4,000 yuan (360 to 480 US dollars) of net profit.

China's top milk production groups, such as Yili Milk Production Group and Mengniu Milk Production Group, both set up fresh milk production bases in the area.

Meanwhile, local farmers also raised over 800,000 sheep for mutton.
Potatoes have been grown on two fifths of the league's total 667,000 hectares of farmland because of its high yields and good market price.

"The project of returning fragile land from cropland to grassland or afforested land has prompted our League to shift industry mix from agriculture-oriented to livestock farming- oriented," said Han Zhiran, secretary of the League committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Duan Deming, a team leader with Huangnaobao Village in the Ulanqab League said that 56 households of the village's total 68 households raise cows and 32 households raise sheep.

"The livelihood of the village has improved, and more than 2, 000 fellow villagers who left to avoid poverty are now returning," he added.

Qin Yucai, an official with the "Go-West" campaign under the State Council cited the Ulanqab League as a fine example to help needy farmers to be better off after returning their farmland to grassland.

China officially initiated the nationwide project of returning fragile farmland to forests or pastures in 1999. The project involves a total of 25 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities as well as Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and the central government is expected to allocate more than 26 billion yuan (about 3.1 billion US dollars) for the immense project.

The country will return a total of 15.2 million hectares of farmland to woodlands or grassland.

By the end of September, China had returned 13.4 million hectares of fragile land from farmland to forests or pastures.

According to Qin, securing farmers a permanent living after the return of their farmland to the nature is an equally essential subject for the final success of the project.