The surrounding countryside is a dry patchwork of millet and corn fields covered with the fine yellow silt found across the Loess Plateau, one of the most erosion-prone places on earth.

Unsustainable agricultural practices accelerated deforestation and caused erosion, and, as a result, "the people living in the more remote parts of the plateau were caught in a poverty trap."

The serious soil erosion of the Loess Plateau has led to not only the reduction of soil productivity but also the soil degeneration.