China will strive to ensure that there is no diminution of the land area set aside for growing grain next year, said an official with the Ministry of Agriculture.

The country will try to preserve at least 105 million hectares of land for growing grain, or 11 percent of its land area, said the Ministry's Party secretary Sun Zhengcai at a recent national agriculture work conference here.

The country will also endeavor to improve grain output per unit of land area by at least 1 percent year on year, said Sun.

In China, demand for grain still outruns supply, the distribution of grain growing areas is unbalanced, as is the distribution of varieties of grain in the different areas, said Sun.

China's grain growing land area dropped from 113 million hectares in 1998 to a record-low of 99 million in 2003.

The area rebounded to an estimated 104 million hectares last year as a result of government incentive policies to grain growers and strict control of land development for non-agricultural use.

From January to November, the government detected 77,400 cases of illegal land use, 13.6 percent up year on year, with the area of land involved surging 78.2 percent to 59,600 hectares, according to the Ministry of Land and Resources.

China has set a goal of retaining at least 120 million hectares of arable land by 2010. The current arable land area stands at 122 million hectares.

More efforts are needed in the fields of insect pest control, disaster prevention and relief and agricultural mechanization, said Sun.

(Xinhua News Agency December 26, 2006)