Pollution from heavy metals devastates farmland

Most mainlanders are familiar with air pollution, thanks to the thick smog that frequently envelops their cities, but many are unaware of the pollution affecting the ground beneath their feet.

In fact, the soil their food is growing in is no healthier than the foul air they are breathing.

As the government said in a recent document, it is not something "to be optimistic about". But just how pessimistic people should be is beyond the government's knowledge, the government said, even though it spent1 billion yuan (HK$1.24 billion) on a national survey conducted between 2006 and 2010.

In a policy directive issued late last month, the State Council ordered local governments to "attach great importance" to soil pollution and gain a thorough knowledge of the situation by 2015. Local governments should categorise land under their jurisdiction according to soil quality and establish a database with the information by the end of next year.

The orders came seven years after the central government launched its high-profile national survey of soil quality, the results of which have never been released.

In 2006, the State Environmental Protection Administration - now the Ministry of Environmental Protection - announced that it would spend one billion yuan over three-and-a-half years to determine pollution levels in soil across the mainland and establish a soil pollution database.