Half a century after Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” brought irrigation to the arid grasslands of Zhengxin in a remote corner of northwest China, the government is giving up on its attempt to make a breadbasket out of what has increasingly become a stretch of scrub and sand dunes. In a problem that’s pervasive in much of China, overfarming has drawn down the water table so low that desert is overtaking farmland.

Many communities have been emptied altogether, leaving behind crumbling homes and empty courtyards.

The battle against deserts is playing out across much of western China. Desertification has caused as much as $7 billion in annual economic losses, the China Daily reported. Over the past decade, Chinese deserts expanded at a rate of 950 square miles a year. The farm production declines have forced China to draw down its grain stocks, and eventually it will need to buy a massive 30-50 million tons a year on the world market.

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