China's Aksu excels in modern cotton farming, green preservation

Well known for its quality cotton, Aksu has enhanced its cotton production manifold through using modern technology like drones.

Visiting some cotton fields in Kumuoira village, in the Awat county of Aksu, this correspondent found drones being used in the field to spread pesticides.

Mehmud, a local Muslim cotton farmer, said that per hectare yield increased to a significant level through the use of modern agriculture equipment.

Chinese government has been providing all out support to ensure modern use of technology in the agricultural sector, he informed.

Officials said the cotton planting area in Xinjiang has reached over 37.18 million mu (2.47 million hectares) and the output is expected to hit over 5.5 million tons, up from the 5.16 million tons in 2020.

Mu is a unit of area measurement used in China.

The cotton yield per mu was raised to 450, local farmers said.

In April 2021, some Western brands, including Adidas, Nike and H&M, boycotted Xinjiang cotton, following a call from the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) that cited alleged "forced labor" in Xinjiang, officials said, adding that the boycott triggered fierce backlash in China, as Chinese consumers started to buy more homegrown brands than ever in retaliation.

According to the Global Times report, though most Xinjiang textile and yarn products have stalled, the sales in the domestic market have more than doubled, thanks to this endorsement.

The report also said that, to cope with the potential impact, these companies are also developing more high-end cotton products to diversify their sales. 

Many Xinjiang cotton farmers often shares videos of cotton farming and picking on social media platforms, in an attempt to "let the outside world know them better.“

Being a part of the Gobi desert, Aksu area was sandy, but with magnificent endeavours, Chinese authorities turned the area into an oasis.

Visiting the Wetland Park, one can understand the mammoth scale of transformation.

The park showcases hundreds of varieties of flower, fauna and orchids.

Aksu National Wetland Park is located in the northwest of Aksu City, covering an area of more than 5000 mu. The good ecological environment of the wetland park has attracted 7 kinds of national first-class protected animals such as golden eagle, black stork and Xinjiang Aristichthys nobilis, as well as more than 20 kinds of national second-class protected animals such as Tarim rabbit, egret and heron, which also attract many citizens and tourists to visit the park.

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