It is the prime time for bagging apples in Yichuan County, Shaanxi Province. Within the dwarf apple orchards of Yunyan Town, a scene of bustling activity unfolds as fruit farmers weave between tree rows, skillfully covering young fruit with protective bags. The view reveals expansive, orderly, and vibrant orchards stretching across the landscape. This encouraging sight stems from a local innovative reform known as "trees per mu," which has paved a new path for increasing farmland, enhancing agricultural efficiency, and boosting farmer incomes.
Standing beneath the fruit trees, Du Yun, the Party Committee Secretary of Yunyan Town, reflected on the transformation. Just a few years ago, the area was characterized by crisscrossing ridges and fragmented plots, with small, irregular fields everywhere. Dense boundary lines and scattered grave mounds acted like shackles, not only sparking neighborly disputes but also preventing large agricultural machinery from operating and hindering the advancement of scaled cultivation, severely constraining the local apple industry's development.
To break the deadlock of land fragmentation, Yunyan Town took the lead in consolidating scattered plots. Based on fully respecting local farmers' wishes, they reorganized the land and planned contiguous orchards. Abandoning the long-standing old rule of "allocating land by the mu," they innovatively introduced the "trees per mu" allocation system. Newly planted fruit trees were distributed to households based on the number of trees, transforming the previous fixed "mu boundaries" into flexible "tree boundaries."
As efforts to integrate land and establish standardized orchards were in full swing, the scattered grave mounds dotting the fields became a new bottleneck. Discussing the resource waste caused by scattered graves in orchards, Secretary Du Yun calculated the economic loss for reporters: a single scattered grave occupies space that could accommodate 11 dwarf apple trees. With an annual output value of 200 yuan per tree at full production, a single grave mound results in a direct annual loss exceeding 20,000 yuan. With over 5,600 scattered graves across the town's orchards, the long-term losses are substantial, prompting a comprehensive rollout of funeral reform.
Yunyan Town promoted grave relocation through concentrated policy briefings, village cadvisiting households to calculate benefits, and party members leading by example. In 2024, Xinhua Village completed the relocation of 15 graves in just five days, planting fruit trees on all 4 mu of land freed up. Baoding Village cumulatively relocated 78 graves and subsequently built the northwest region's first village-level public cemetery, creating ample space for orchard development.
The combination of land consolidation and funeral reform has thoroughly revitalized dormant land resources, with the results of increased farmland becoming clearly visible. By leveling sloping land, removing old boundaries, merging production roads, and clearing scattered graves, Yunyan Town has cumulatively integrated 36,000 mu of land. The "trees per mu" model covers 16,000 mu of this, releasing all space previously occupied by ridges, graves, and abandoned field borders. Villagers were pleasantly surprised to find that not only was farmland not reduced, but the town's total land area actually increased by over 700 mu.
Taking the demonstration site in Xianna Group, Xinhua Village as an example, what were originally 24 scattered, uneven sloping plots have been consolidated into 4 contiguous large fields. Five winding production roads were streamlined into two, and the previously chaotic, disorderly plots have been transformed into neatly arranged, standardized orchards, achieving a significant improvement in land use efficiency.
Following land consolidation, the establishment of high-standard orchards and scientific management practices were implemented simultaneously, laying a solid foundation for enhancing industrial efficiency. Yunyan Town concurrently improved water conservancy facilities to achieve full irrigation coverage for the orchards. It also adhered to a "one orchard, one strategy" approach to promote the improvement of fruit tree varieties, vigorously promoting new superior varieties such as 'Ruixianghong' and 'Qincui'.
Relying on a provincial-level farmers' field school, Yunyan Town regularly invites experts from Northwest A&F University to conduct management and protection training, cultivating over a hundred certified, high-quality fruit farmers. Meanwhile, local socialized services have been continuously upgraded. By leveraging cooperatives to implement托管 services, they achieve unified procurement of agricultural inputs and carry out mechanized operations. This saves 1,244 yuan per mu during the orchard establishment phase and an additional 660 yuan in daily management and protection costs.
Today, the average annual output value per mu of orchard has reached 34,000 yuan, a substantial increase of 24,000 yuan compared to the previous traditional tall-stock planting methods, fully highlighting the scale advantages of modern agriculture.
With more land, higher yields, and lower costs, the improvement in industry quality ultimately translates into increased income for farmers. "An extra 20,000 yuan in income per mu of land—who could have imagined such a good thing before!" said Zhang Yunfeng, a grower from Xinhua Village and one of the fruit farmers who has directly benefited. Xinhua Village's collective economy has also developed accordingly, establishing facilities like a fruit bag factory and a fruit crate factory, employing 42 villagers in nearby jobs. In 2025, the village's collective economic income reached 850,000 yuan.
With online live-streaming sales and direct supply to offline supermarkets, the sales channels for apples continue to expand. Villagers have achieved diversified income growth through planting, employment, and dividends. Today, the "trees per mu" reform model has won several provincial honors. A single innovative reform of "trees per mu" has linked a series of measures including land consolidation, funeral reform, and industrial upgrading, successfully achieving a triple transformation of increasing farmland, enhancing agricultural efficiency, and boosting farmer incomes.
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