Can Plastic Bags Help Treat Deserts? Shanxi Farmer Invents Waterless Tree-Planting Technology, 40 Countries Rush to Replicate!

Saudi Arabia once ambitiously set a goal: plant 50 billion trees to turn its deserts green. After calculations, they found that each tree would require nearly a hundred-dollar bill worth of water annually, and the plan was cut back by 80%.

At the same time, while these oil tycoons were struggling with the desert, a farmer in Shanxi buried two plastic bags in the sand—and the trees survived.

Let’s talk about how this came to be.

Tian Xinming, from Yangquan, Shanxi, lost his parents early. He didn’t finish elementary school and dropped out. At 17, he went to work in the Inner Mongolia desert planting trees—not to combat desertification, but because he had no other options.

There, he saw something baffling: after watering the seedlings, the next day, a gust of wind would blow them away. Out of 100 trees, only about 10 would survive—if he was lucky. He spent money and effort, but the trees still died. Tian Xinming felt this shouldn’t be the way.

This idea had been lingering in his mind for nearly 15 years.

The real breakthrough happened in 2005. He was working near the desert in Xinjiang, too poor to afford a hotel, so he used a piece of plastic to make a simple shelter on the sand. One night, a scorpion hiding under the plastic stung him. The next morning, he unfolded the plastic and saw tiny water droplets on its surface.

Where did the water come from in the desert?

He later understood: the desert’s daytime heat is intense, and at night, it cools sharply. This temperature difference causes the moisture in the air to condense on cooler surfaces. It’s not magic; it’s basic physics.

But when applied to trees, it became a technique.

He began experimenting: wrapping a specially designed plastic bag around the roots of a seedling. During the day, the bag heats up and expands, tightly sealing the roots and trapping residual soil moisture. At night, as it cools, the bag contracts, and the moisture in the air condenses inside the gap between the bag and the trunk, slowly seeping into the soil, giving the tree water.

No watering needed, no maintenance. Two bags per tree could sustain it for three years.

From discovering the principle in 2005 to obtaining a national patent in 2016, he spent eleven years. He wrecked nine cars, exhausted his savings, traveled over a million kilometers across six northwest provinces. His family advised him to give up; colleagues mocked him as a “farmer trying to be an inventor.”

But he never stopped.

After the patent was granted, China’s largest desertification control company, Yili Group, provided him land for testing. After three years, the poplar trees grew over three meters tall and swayed in the wind.

By 2020, even more impressive data emerged. Ant Forest in Inner Mongolia launched a reforestation project covering nearly 37 square kilometers, verified by third-party agencies. Using Tian Xinming’s technique, the survival rate of sand-fixating plants like saltbush exceeded 95%; for tamarisk, over 85%. Traditional irrigation methods in the same area couldn’t reach a 30% survival rate. All passed the inspection on the first try.

Two plastic bags costing less than two yuan achieved what expensive watering systems couldn’t.

To understand why this technology has spread to over 40 countries, we need to see what deserts are doing to those nations.

The UAE is wealthy. They use “desalination plus drip irrigation” to plant trees, costing nearly 1,000 RMB per tree. Dubai’s famous desert resort area draws 300,000 cubic meters of underground water daily to keep the lawns green—equivalent to the daily water use of 300,000 people—and the water table drops by about 1.5 meters each year.

This is a result of wealth, not a solution.

The turning point came in July 2019. At the 7th Kubqi International Desert Forum in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, representatives from over 40 countries gathered, including many Middle Eastern officials.

Tian Xinming set up a booth at the event.

Reports say the interpreters were overwhelmed; delegates crowded around his display, gesturing and pointing to understand how the two plastic bags worked. A Qatari delegate immediately approved and signed a cooperation agreement.

Qatar’s conditions are even tougher than northwest China: less than 100 mm of annual rainfall, salt-alkaline soil, higher temperatures. Tian Xinming planted 200 drought-resistant trees in the outskirts of Doha, monitored by staff from the Chinese embassy.

By the end of 2020, all 200 trees survived. They were lush and thriving. This success caused a stir in the Middle East.

Later, he went to Kuwait, where the soil was even more saline, and the trees also took root. He then visited Saudi Arabia, planting 200 hectares of sea buckthorn in Buraidah Province, directly sowing seeds without greenhouse seedlings, cutting costs by half—the first natural forest in the desert in nearly 30 years.

The UN included this technology in its desertification control manual, calling it “the most globally scalable low-resource afforestation solution.” A comparison report states: Tian Xinming’s method costs one-fortieth of traditional drip irrigation per unit area, reduces water use by 95%, and shortens ecological recovery time to one-third of conventional methods.

An interesting detail: China used to import drip irrigation technology from Israel. Now, it’s exporting desertification control solutions to the Middle East—an inversion made possible by a Shanxi orphan.

The technology itself continues to evolve.

In 2019, Tian Xinming saw a banyan tree in Hainan, where a single air root touches the ground and grows into a forest. He wondered if similar trees could exist in the desert. After four years of experimentation, selecting a shrub called sandwood knot, he worked on making its roots branch and produce new shoots.

He failed countless times, but out of 300 experimental trees, only one succeeded.

That one grew into 11 healthy saplings. This means desertification isn’t just about planting one tree at a time; it can be a self-replicating process.

He also cultivated Hami melons and wheat in the desert.

Desert agriculture sounds absurd, but he now has living seedlings.

Oman plans to adopt this technology in 2026 to reclaim the Rub’ al Khali desert; Morocco has incorporated it into the “Green Wall” project, with an initial phase of 5,000 hectares.

As for Tian Xinming himself: he’s in his fifties, never married, an orphan with only elementary education. He has invested all his earnings into desert projects, wrecked nine cars across China.

He once said something that feels fitting here: “I want to turn the world’s deserts into oases, so future generations will remember that an old Shanxi man planted forests in the desert.”

It sounds grand, but considering what he’s actually achieved, it’s not an exaggeration.

While many PhDs and research teams work on desertification, the person who cracked this problem is a migrant worker who couldn’t afford a hotel and used a plastic sheet to block the wind. He can see the water droplets because he’s the only one who truly slept beside that plastic sheet that night.