China's per capita arable land, which dropped from 1.43 mu (0.095 hectares) in 2003 to 1.4 mu (0.093 hectares) in 2005, could continue to fall next year, a government official said on Sunday.

Chen Xiwen, director of the office of the central leading group on rural work, said the greatest challenge for the development of China's agriculture was the shortage of farmland and water.

He urged government departments to heed the soil erosion problem and "earnestly push forward the modern agricultural policy".

China lost eight million hectares of farmland over the past decade, and the area of cultivated land fell from 1.951 billion mu (130 million hectares) in 1996 to 1.83 billion mu (122 million hectares) last year, according to Monday's China Business News.

Chen said the central government each year set aside four million mu (267,000 hectares) of farmland nationwide for construction. However, the actual need for farmland by different provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities reached 12 million mu (800,000 hectares) annually.

He predicted that with accelerated industrialization and urbanization, China's arable land would continue to drop.

Meanwhile, water shortages had already seriously affected agricultural development.

National Bureau of Statistics figures show China's per capita farmland was only 40 percent of the world average, and per capita water resources were 27 percent of the world average.

He warned that China's agriculture sector would face a crisis due to inadequate rural infrastructure and water resources unless these problems were solved in the next few years.

(Xinhua News Agency July 4, 2006)