"The harvested wheat has reached the top grade, with an average yield of 294 kilograms per mu, surpassing our expectations," announced Wang Jianjun, deputy general manager of Xinjiang Wuzheng Green Agricultural Development Co, at the harvest site in early June.

Makit county is surrounded by sand on three sides and desert accounts for 90 percent of its total area.

Over 36,000 hectares of the county's land are mildly saline-alkali, and those levels are severe in another 13,333 hectares, making sand control and disaster mitigation urgent.