back to search results
Less Info

Intricate terraces, dug mostly by hand, cover an area of the Loess Plateau in Northern China, a formation larger than France or Thailand. The terraces were dug by hand in the 1950s to control erosion of the fine, silty windblown soil, at a time when the region had some of the highest rates of soil erosion on the planet, and its fifty million residents suffered from poor crops and extreme poverty. These terraces were recently modified by machines to make them larger, flatter, and more accessible to farm machinery, while the crop mix has been shifting away from wheat to more-profitable corn and fruit trees. When this photograph was taken in 2016, most of the erosion
was under control, but the farmwork was still done by hand. China has nearly 20 percent of the world’s population, which it struggles to feed with less than 9 percent of the arable land. Around a third of China’s cultivated cropland is farmed on terraces.

Filename
STNMTZ_20160701_18034.TIF
Copyright
©2016 George Steinmetz
Image Size
4600x3448 / 45.4MB
www.GeorgeSteinmetz.com
Contained in galleries
Intricate terraces, dug mostly by hand, cover an area of the Loess Plateau in Northern China, a formation larger than France or Thailand. The terraces were dug by hand in the 1950s to control erosion of the fine, silty windblown soil, at a time when the region had some of the highest rates of soil erosion on the planet, and its fifty million residents suffered from poor crops and extreme poverty. These terraces were recently modified by machines to make them larger, flatter, and more accessible to farm machinery, while the crop mix has been shifting away from wheat to more-profitable corn and fruit trees. When this photograph was taken in 2016, most of the erosion<br /> was under control, but the farmwork was still done by hand. China has nearly 20 percent of the world’s population, which it struggles to feed with less than 9 percent of the arable land. Around a third of China’s cultivated cropland is farmed on terraces.

All images ©George Steinmetz. Please contact us for usage.