Yin Erbai digs down into the accumulated coal ash to show how deep it is, about 20cm. He has 8 mu (0.53 hectare) of farmland near the ash dam of the Shentou Number 2 Power Plant in Shuozhou, Shanxi province. His fields, which directly face the dam breakage about 300m away, were completely flooded by coal ash slurry during the accident occurred at the dam on August 16th. He lost his entire crop of sesame. According to Yin, one mu of land can grow more than 150kg of sesame. At a price of RMB 4.8 per kilogram of sesame seeds, he has lost more than RMB 6,000 this year, and even more in the future: his fields have been completely ruined and rendered infertile by the coal ash.