Spring is here and, as farmers gear up for their most important
planting season, the central government is stepping up efforts to
ensure enough grain is planted to feed the country’s 1.3 billion
people.
The State Council issued an emergency circular on Saturday,
forbidding further seizure of basic cultivated land for
reforestation and for any activities other than grain planting,
like livestock farming.
After a three-year investigation, in 2001 the Ministry of Land
and Resources designated 108.9 million hectares out of the
country’s 127 million hectares of arable land as basic cultivated
land.
Identified as the most productive fields, basic cultivated land
is not to be transferred to uses other than grain planting without
special approval from the ministry, says the country’s Regulation
on the Protection of Basic Cultivated Land.
China needs at least 106.7 million hectares of cultivated land
to feed its future theoretical peak population of 1.6 billion, said
Pan Mingcai, director of the ministry’s Department of Cultivated
Land Protection.
The state has implemented two major policies on agriculture
development in the past few years.
One is to stop farmland cultivation on hill slopes, which is
suitable for reforestation, and use the area to plant trees. The
other is to upgrade the agricultural product mix by growing more
cash crops.
These policies have sometimes been over-implemented by officials
who used them to seize huge chunks of basic farmland.
Pan Mingcai applauded the new move by the State Council, saying
that it is the mishandling of these two policies, not construction,
that has caused the greatest loss of cultivated farmland.
By the end of 2002, China’s cultivated land had fallen to 123.5
million hectares from 127 million hectares in 2001.
Of the lost arable land last year, 229,248 hectares went to
construction projects, while 2.6 million hectares went to
reforestation, livestock and cash crops.
Large tracts of cultivated farmland have been improperly used as
a result of the mishandling of the state’s policies.
While these policies are necessary to improve the environment or
boost agriculture, efforts sometimes go too far and cause
unnecessary losses of cultivated land, even basic cultivated land
in many cases, he said.
The new policy calls on various local governments to confine
their efforts to non-basic cultivated land and wild ground, while
recovering basic cultivated land lost to other purposes.
The ministry will stop endorsing new land use applications from
any local government that defies the rule, says the circular.
In rapidly growing Chinese cities, stopping the supply of
construction land is like taking the firewood from under the
cauldron, some say.
Also over the weekend, the State Forestry Administration said no
trees should be planted on basic cultivated land. Any illegally
planted trees will not be issued the necessary certificates for
commercial disposal.
Related laws require that all trees to be put to commercial uses
win a green light from the forestry authority first, just as the
land authority’s approval is a prerequisite to the transfer of
arable land for construction.
The Ministry of Agriculture reports that China harvested 450
billion kilograms of crops last year, substantially below the past
decade’s average of 500 billion kilograms annually.
Accordingly, the country is under-supplied 40 billion to 50
billion kilograms of grain, and prices of some staple grains have
increased.
Last week, the State Council vowed at a national work conference
to manage a yearly crop output of 455 billion kilograms this year,
a remarkable jump.
Of course, the goal assumes there is sufficient arable land,
said Wang Linghai, a researcher with the Beijing-based Chinese
Academy of Land and Resources Economics.
Wang also drew attention to the number of programs the Ministry
of Land and Resources has launched this month to strengthen land
management, such as a joint national probe with the Ministry of
Agriculture into the uses of basic cultivated land, and the
continuation of last year’s national campaign against the
“enclosure movement” by hundreds of industrial parks and
development zones.
Also earlier this month, Minister of Land and Resources Sun
Wensheng said the ministry will only endorse 120,000 hectares of
cultivated land to be transferred for construction uses this year,
23.4 percent less than last year.
Wang is optimistic about the central government’s stepped-up
campaign against abuses of cultivated land.
He said the Ministry of Land and Resources has stood by earlier
warnings to punish land abuses severely.
Local governments committed over 80 percent of last year’s land
abuse cases.
This month alone has seen six major local officials handed
criminal or administrative punishments.
Moreover, 26 cities that failed to submit last year’s land use
reports as requested have had their new land-use applications
shelved by the ministry, the first move of its kind in the
country.
Observers believe the Saturday circular of the State Council is
another reaffirmation of the central government’s resolution to
safeguard the country’s food supply.
(Xinhua News Agency March 22, 2004)