Turning Sandy Land Into Fertile Farmland: Technical Paths and Commercialization Exploration of Global Desert Soil Improvement Projects
I. Arable Land Shortage and Desertification Challenges Amid Food Security Pressures
Global arable land resources are facing structural contraction. According to data from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), over the past three decades, two-thirds of the world's land has been continuously trending toward aridification, with the area of land destroyed each year equivalent to the territory of Egypt, directly weakening the capacity of land to produce food and conserve water resources. If the current trend continues, about 16 million square kilometers of land will continue to degrade by 2050, an area almost equal to the size of South America. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) further points out in *The State of the World's Land and Water Resources 2025* that man-made land degradation, water scarcity and climate change are superimposing to impact agricultural productivity.
While the supply side is contracting, the demand side is expanding. The United Nations predicts that by 2030, the world will need an additional 300 million hectares of arable land to feed a population of nearly 10 billion. More than 2 billion hectares of once fertile land around the world have been degraded, twice the size of China's territory. This supply-demand gap constitutes the most fundamental market driving force in the field of desert soil improvement, and also forces the technical route to extend from "improving existing stock" to "creating new increments".
II. Core Technical Paths: From "Sand Fixation to Soil Formation" to "Liquid Nanoclay"
At present, the global desert soil improvement technologies present a pattern of multiple paths advancing in parallel, and the two most representative technical routes come from China and Norway respectively.
The "desert soilization" technology proposed by the team of Professor YI Zhijian from Chongqing Jiaotong University cuts into this proposition from the perspective of mechanics. This technology adds plant-extracted adhesives between sand particles to endow discrete sand particles with omnidirectional bonding constraints, so that they have the mechanical properties of soil — solid when dry, rheological when wet, and can freely switch between the two states, thus realizing the functions of water retention, fertilizer retention and air permeability. The YI Zhijian team put forward the theoretical concept in 2008, went through five years of laboratory research, completed a 25-mu pilot test in 2016, and then expanded the scale year by year. By 2026, the total transformed area has reached 50,000 mu. This technology has been applied in multiple sites such as the Ulan Buh Desert in Inner Mongolia and Chabala Township, Qushui County, Tibet. The team has also obtained 26 authorized invention patents and established a multidisciplinary collaboration system covering mechanics, engineering, soil science, agriculture, biology and other fields.
The Norwegian company Desert Control has chosen the nanotechnology route. Its core product Liquid Nanoclay is a suspension that crushes clay particles to a thickness of 1.5 nanometers, which can be sprayed and applied through conventional irrigation facilities, turning barren sandy land into arable soil with water and fertilizer retention capacity within 7 hours. This technology has performed outstandingly in field trials in many countries: tests by the Agricultural Research Center of Egypt recorded a 416% increase in wheat yield compared with the control group, vegetable trials in the United Arab Emirates saw a 108% increase in individual crop size, and trials in the Middle East and North Africa showed a 77% reduction in irrigation water demand. Desert Control is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange and is currently in the stage of commercial operation.
In terms of the microbial path, the Saudi Arabian startup Terraxy was incubated by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Its flagship product Carbosoil can permanently sequester carbon dioxide in the soil matrix for hundreds of years, while increasing plant growth and yield by 70% under the same irrigation conditions. This technology has been verified by the regulatory sandbox of the Saudi Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture. Domestically, the "water-energy core" bamboo basket technology based on solid waste developed by the team of Professor SUN Shiquan from Changsha University of Science and Technology ferments urban organic solid waste into nutrient soil with high fertilizer efficiency and high water retention, and realizes both "increasing sources" and "reducing expenditure" of water with the bamboo basket device. In the pilot test in the hinterland of the Mu Us Desert, the survival rate of Salix cheilophila exceeded 95%, the survival rate of Caragana korshinskii exceeded 90%, and no groundwater extraction or artificial irrigation was required. The red mud-based soil conditioner developed by Jinzhi (Shandong) New Materials Co., Ltd. after 8 years of R&D uses industrial solid waste red mud to prepare hydrogel materials. After three years of field trials verified by Ningxia Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, it can increase the water holding capacity of sandy soil by more than 400% and save more than 50% of water for planting.
III. Commercialization Paths: Carbon Sink Revenue, Government Orders and Industrial Chain Extension
Desert soil improvement projects are evolving from purely public welfare attributes to diversified commercial models. Carbon sink trading is one of the most imaginative sources of revenue. Enterprises such as HyveGeo construct a dual revenue model of "selling organic soil improvement solutions + exporting carbon credits" by quantifying the carbon sequestration effect of biochar and selling carbon credits. Preliminary calculations show that planting fungus grass in arid desert areas can net absorb 48 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare in the current year, which is equivalent to an annual carbon sink income of about 200 RMB per mu at the current carbon price, transforming desert control from "only investment without output" to a direction with economic returns.
In terms of target users, government-led ecological restoration projects are still the largest source of orders at present. The continuous advancement of the sixth phase of China's "Three-North" Project provides a large-scale market space for relevant enterprises. In 2026 alone, only Mengcao Ecological has won bids for multiple projects successively, including two key projects: the edge-locking control of the Ulan Buh Desert and the consolidation and construction of the forest and grass belt in the Tengger Desert, with a total contract amount of 588 million RMB and a control area of about 285,000 mu. At the same time, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and agricultural investment institutions are emerging as new demand sides. Saudi Arabia's Terraxy has obtained a $3 million seed round financing led by Aramco's venture capital division, and the funds will be used to build a 30,000 square meter commercial production base. The food security strategies of Gulf countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia list desert agricultural infrastructure as a key investment direction, creating an institutional market for technology suppliers.
In terms of market capacity, the global desertification management product market reached 4.73 billion US dollars in 2025, an increase of about 212% over 2020. It is expected to exceed 5.45 billion US dollars in 2026, with an annual compound growth rate of about 14.2%. Among them, the scale of soil conditioner products is 840 million US dollars, and their application in the restoration of sandy arable land continues to expand. The business model in this field is evolving from a single government project contracting to a composite model of "technology product licensing + carbon sink revenue sharing + agricultural product industrialization", and market participants have expanded from scientific research institutions and state-owned enterprises to startups and multinational enterprises.
IV. Team Capabilities and Verification Progress
The team composition of projects in this field generally presents interdisciplinary characteristics, and technical verification is moving from laboratories to large-scale applications. Taking the team from Chongqing Jiaotong University as an example, YI Zhijian himself is a professor of mechanics, and his core discovery originates from basic research on the mechanical behavior of granular materials. The team later absorbed talents from soil science, agronomy, ecology, engineering and other fields, forming R&D strength spanning multiple first-level disciplines. The team recently connected with the Tang Zhongying Foundation for the "Desert Oasis Action" project, aiming to promote industrialization promotion and talent cultivation with the support of public welfare funds.
Relying on the national key R&D project, the SUN Shiquan team from Changsha University of Science and Technology has carried out research on fulvic acid-enhanced indigenous bacteria remediation since 2021. On this basis, it derived the solid waste-based nutrient soil technology for desert control. After completing a 200-mu pilot test in the Mu Us Desert in 2025, it officially launched a large-scale promotion demonstration planting of 1.1 million square meters in 2026. In terms of industrialized cooperation, the team has reached an intention of transforming technological achievements with Etuokeqian Banner Urban Construction Investment Co., Ltd., planning to promote intelligent planting and management in a 1000-mu desert experimental area.
Internationally, the commercialization process of Desert Control has entered a substantive stage. After more than ten years of field trial accumulation in the Middle East, North Africa and North America, the company has generated commercial revenue in three market segments. Its Liquid Nanoclay technology can be applied through existing irrigation infrastructure, lowering the deployment threshold for end users. With the support of the National Transformation Institute of KAUST, Terraxy has transformed university research results into industrial assets that can be produced on a large scale, and the construction of its production base marks that the technology has moved from the laboratory verification stage to the industrial deployment stage.
From the perspective of the overall industry process, desert soil improvement technology is in a critical window period of transition from scientific verification to large-scale commercial application. The technical routes are becoming increasingly mature, and the policy environment and carbon trading mechanism provide preliminary support for commercialization. However, the economic efficiency of transformation cost, ecological risk control in large-scale applications, and verification of cross-regional technology universality are still the core bottlenecks restricting the accelerated development of the industry.