Coverage of soil testing formula fertilization technology of main crops is to exceed 94% in Hubei province (over 95% in demonstration counties/county-level cities/administrative regions), and fertilizer use is to decrease by over 3%, all in 2019, as detailed in Notice on Releasing Plan to Decrease Use and Improve Efficiency of Fertilizers 2019, recently issued by the Department of Agriculture of Hubei.

While establishing 15 fertilizer use decrease and efficiency improvement demonstration counties (county-level cities/administrative regions) in 2019, the notice calls for collecting more than 7 000 soil samples to analyze, investigating quality of cultivated land and finishing more than 350 field experiments to update nutrient data, optimize fertilization parameters and improve fertilizer formula.

The provincial government is to reduce unreasonable use of fertilizers, but increase use ratio to over 40% by 2020, via testing soil, conducting field experiments, improving formula and using data resources.