Technology Breaks Drought Constraints, Guyang Rape Ranks Among National High-Yield Areas

In 2025, the rape demonstration field in Miaohao Village, Huaishuo Town, Guyang County, Baotou City, Inner Mongolia, achieved a per mu yield of 211.85 kilograms, successfully ranking 8th among spring rape producing areas in China. This yield has doubled compared with traditional planting, completely rewriting the history of "low yield and inefficiency" of dryland rape in Guyang and injecting new vitality into the development of dry farming in northern China.

This breakthrough achievement stems from the innovative practice of the "Rape Wide-Film Furrow Sowing Integrated Technology". This technological achievement has been included in the national promotion archives and incorporated into the high-yield typical cases issued by the National Agricultural Technology Extension and Service Center, providing a replicable and promotable "Guyang Plan" for grain and oil yield increase in the vast cold and arid areas at the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains, and offering valuable experience for agricultural development in similar regions.

As a typical dry farming area, Guyang's inherent conditions of little rainfall and low temperature once restricted the development of the rape industry, with low and unstable per mu yields in the past. To solve this problem, the technical team focused on five key links: "temperature increase, moisture conservation, rainwater collection, sowing date adjustment, and cost reduction and efficiency improvement", and integrated and innovated the rape wide-film furrow sowing cultivation system. The core highlight of this system is the pioneering 0.9-meter wide-film full-coverage combined with V-shaped furrow sowing rainwater collection technology, which can maximize the interception of natural precipitation and increase the precipitation utilization rate by 33%. At the same time, high-quality double-high rape varieties resistant to dense planting and cold are carefully selected, combined with soil testing and formula fertilization and green pest control technologies, reducing chemical fertilizers by 15% and pesticides by 18%. The full mechanization rate has jumped to 95%, realizing efficient and convenient operations from land preparation to harvesting and greatly reducing the labor intensity of farmers.

This cultivation model has effectively solved the long-standing problems of insufficient accumulated temperature, difficulty in retaining rainwater and limited crop selection in arid areas, laying a solid foundation for the optimization of the local agricultural structure and the "four controls" (water control, fertilizer control, pesticide control and film control) campaign. It is estimated that planting rape with this technology increases per mu income by more than 200 yuan, accumulating over 31 million yuan in efficiency for Guyang County's grain and oil industry, and effectively laying a practical foundation for empowering dryland agriculture with science and technology and ensuring food security.

The high-yield practice in Miaohao Village, Huaishuo Town, is driving the acceleration of Guyang's rape industry towards a new pattern of "centralized and contiguous, large-scale planting and standardized management". Guyang County plans to achieve full coverage of the rape wide-film furrow sowing technology in 2026, customize hierarchical training programs for different towns to ensure the effective implementation of the technology, set up a service team of "experts + agricultural technical backbones + local skilled farmers" to provide precise guidance in the fields, and continuously tackle key technologies in variety improvement and efficient water and fertilizer utilization, promoting the transformation from "high yield in demonstration fields" to "stable yield in large fields". It will plow the fertile soil of dry farming with technological innovation and inject solid Guyang strength into the new round of national 100 billion jin grain production capacity improvement.

A film-covered furrow has drawn a "golden" path of increasing income and prosperity on the land prone to drought. Guyang's practice is a vivid portrayal of agricultural production empowered by science and technology and cadres and masses overcoming difficulties, demonstrating the power of wisdom and resilience. This heavy honor of "8th in the country" not only embodies the joy of harvest, but also contains the strong power to promote the quality and efficiency improvement and high-quality development of dry farming in northern China.