Yinchuan Plain in the Yellow River Alluvial Plain

Yinchuan Plain is located in a temperate arid area with abundant sunshine, with an average annual sunshine hours of about 3,000 hours and a frost-free period of about 160 days. Rich in heat resources, the active accumulated temperature above 10℃ is about 3300℃. The daily temperature difference is large, with an average of 65438 03℃, which is beneficial to the growth and development of crops and the accumulation of nutrients. Although there is drought and little rain (annual precipitation is about 200mm), the annual transit water volume of the Yellow River reaches more than 30 billion cubic meters, which is convenient for irrigation, and the agricultural natural resources such as light, heat, water and soil are well coordinated, providing extremely favorable conditions for the development of agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry. More than 2,000 years ago, a large number of Central Plains immigrants, together with local ethnic minorities, used the Yellow River to open canals to irrigate fields and manage agriculture and animal husbandry, becoming the earliest irrigation area in the northwest of China, known as "Jiangnan". There are famous ancient canals such as Tanglai Canal, Han Yan Canal, Huinong Canal, Qinqu Canal and Hanqu Canal. Since the 1950s, nine main canals and more than 2,000 branch canals have been built, including the West Main Canal and the East Main Canal. Tanglai Canal, located in Hexi Irrigation District, was built in the third year of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (BC 102), expanded on a large scale in the Tang Dynasty and renovated after the 1950s. The canal line flows through five counties and cities, including Qingtongxia, Yongning, Yinchuan, Helan and Pingluo, with a total length of 154 km, a water diversion capacity of 160 m3/s, and more than 800 branch canals, which can irrigate more than 53,000 hectares of farmland. It is the largest self-flowing main canal for diverting water from the Yellow River in Ningxia.

The Qingtongxia Water Control Project, which was completed in the late 1950s, expanded the irrigated area of Yinchuan Plain to more than 200,000 hectares, nearly doubling that of 1949. Among them, Yin Nan has good irrigation and drainage conditions, and the crops are mainly rice and wheat, which is a high and stable yield area in Ningxia. The main crops in Yin Bei are wheat, miscellaneous grains, sugar beet and soybean. Because of the small slope of the ground, high groundwater level, thick soil, poor drainage and serious soil salinization. But the land is vast and there is great potential for developing production. There are many lakes and swamps around Yinchuan, which is an important aquatic product base in Ningxia. The alluvial plain in front of Helan Mountain has a vast grassland, which is the origin of Ningxia Tan sheep. With the expansion of irrigation area, trees, fruits, medlar and animal husbandry have developed rapidly. The cultivated land in Yinchuan Plain only accounts for15 of the whole autonomous region, while the grain output accounts for 2/3, and the grain commodity rate is about 30%.