Contaminated soil (Photo credit: Simon Song)
According to a national survey, one fortieth of farmland in China is somewhat contaminated, for example by the heavy metal, leading to their un-usability. For this reason, emergence of Cadmium rice has been widely reported in Hunan Province, China. As national stringent farmland requirements are taking effects, many industries bloom to cash in on the opportunity of restoring contaminated farmland. However, relevant regulation policy for the clean-up practice and effectiveness assessment is lacking on the farmland market. On December 30, 2013, the Ministry of Land Resources, China announced that two pilot management programs will be launched in 2014 for restoring heavy metal contaminated farmland, and preventing groundwater overdraft.
Prof. Yangsheng Liu from College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University was invited by Mingsheng Weekly Magazine to discuss policy development, its impact on the industry sector, current farmland restoration market as well as fund sources for the land reclamation. Among many others, Prof. Liu pointed out three key things necessary for the farmland restoration pilot program: firstly, the farmland is severely contaminated, secondly we have reliable and economically practical technology, and lastly we should have unified industry standard for the farmland restoration practice. Unfortunately, none of the latter two exists in China by now.
The details of the interview in Chinese can be found at
http://paper.people.com.cn/mszk/html/2014-01/27/content_1385098.htm