Jiang Ming, director of the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agricultural Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, delivers a speech. [Photo provided to gojilin.gov.cn]

The third Black Soil Protection and Utilization Collaborative Development Forum was held in the city of Changchun on July 5. As the capital city of Northeast China's Jilin province, Changchun played an illustrious host to this prestigious event. The primary objective of this forum was to have an open dialogue among experts and stakeholders on the crucial subject of preserving and utilizing the valuable agricultural resource that is black soil.

The forum attracted the participation of experts, scholars, and officials from various fields and organizations. The attendees discussed the current state and condition of the black soil, exchanged research findings, and proposed strategies to ensure its long-term conservation and usage.

Liu Shian, president of Jilin Branch of Agricultural Bank of China, delivers a speech. [Photo provided to gojilin.gov.cn]

Jilin is known for its abundant black soil, which is highly fertile and takes hundreds of years to form a thick layer of just one centimeter. This has made it the primary grain-producing region in China.

To prevent the fertility of the black soil from being degraded and to maintain productivity, the province has been undertaking conservation tillage, a form of tillage designed to minimize the use of plows and prevent the loss of topsoil. Lishu county offers a prime example of this practice.

Throughout the course of the 24 months, the Black Soil Conservation and Utilization Collaborative Development Alliance has demonstrated a profound dedication to the advancement of financial services, technological innovation aimed at the protection and utilization of black soil, and the facilitation of a state-of-the-art mechanized smart agricultural machinery cloud platform.

Focusing on the collaborative development of soil health and production capacity improvement, a series of black soil protection and utilization technology templates have been formed, including biological breeding, intelligent agricultural machinery equipment research and development, and the integrated agricultural information technology system of air and land. A State Key Laboratory of Black Soil Protection and Utilization is under construction.