China will take a firmer stance on arable land protection in the
next five years to ensure that enough grain is planted to feed its
1.3 billion people.
More than 100 zones to protect farmland will be built in the
next five years, covering 667,000 hectares, according to land and
resources officials who addressed a working conference on farmland
protection yesterday in Shijiazhuang, the capital of north China's
Hebei
Province.
The zones will get more funds and technical support to upgrade
farmland working efficiency and increase output, said Sun Wensheng,
minister of land and resources.
"Each demonstrative zone will use state-of-the-art technical and
management measures," Sun said.
Four to five such zones will be built in each of the 13 main
grain-producing provinces and regions such as Hubei,
Hebei, Jiangsu,
Zhejiang
and Fujian.
One to three zones will be built in each of the remaining provinces
and regions.
The techniques that are expected to make the zones successful
will then be applied to the rest of the country's farmland in the
future.
In 2001, the ministry designated 108.9 million hectares, out of
the country's 127 million hectares of arable land, as basic
cultivated land.
Boasting "the best productivity," the basic cultivated land is
not supposed to be used for purposes other than grain planting
without special approval from the ministry, according to the
country's Regulation on the Protection of Basic Cultivated Land,
which was issued in 1994.
The country has 105.9 million hectares of basic cultivated land
so far this year, or 2.6 million fewer hectares than last year.
"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 shrinkage of farmland will affect the economy and food
security of the country, Pan said.
Statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture show that China
harvested 450 billion kilograms of crops in 2003, compared with the
average 500 billion-kilogram output in the past decade.
(China Daily October 22, 2005)