Desert control work in east China's Anhui Province was successful, said an official with the provincial Forestry Department in Hefei, capital city of Anhui Province, Sunday.

According to the official, 30.3 percent of Anhui's 770,000 hectares of sandy wasteland had been covered with trees and the rest was gradually being turned into farmland or orchards protected by windbreaks.

The provincial government had worked hard for decades against desertification and large-scale afforestation had helped check desertification of farmland, he said.

Thanks to the construction of windbreaks around farmland, the average per-hectare output in the province had increased from 3,000 kg in the 1990s to the present 7,500 kg.

(Xinhua News Agency December 16, 2003)