China will intensify efforts to stabilize the amount of arable land, optimize land-use structure and strengthen oversight, in a push to advance integrated protection of farmland by both quantity and quality and of the farmland ecological system, a senior official with the Ministry of Natural Resources said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a press conference in Beijing, Liu Guohong, Communist Party leadership group secretary of the Ministry of Natural Resources, outlined the ministry's strategic priorities for the next five years with a new law on farmland protection and quality improvement to take effect on Jan 1, 2027.
The law was passed at a session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, which concluded in late August.
Farmland protection has remained high on China's agenda due to its importance to food security, as the country steps up efforts to keep its total farmland area above the red line of 1.8 billion mu (about 120 million hectares).
"Stabilizing the quantity [of farmland] means strictly controlling occupation of farmland and ensuring full replenishment, so as to firmly safeguard the farmland protection red line. We will, in accordance with territorial spatial planning, strictly plan and implement the protection red lines for arable land and permanent basic farmland. We will strictly control the occupation of cultivated land by all types of construction projects," said Liu, who is also the chief inspector of National Natural Resources.
"Where it is indeed difficult to avoid an expropriation of cultivated land for construction, sources for replenishing cultivated land shall be expanded through multiple channels, and the cultivated land expropriated shall be replaced with new cultivated land of the same quantity and the same quality. Any act of expropriating more cultivated land but replacing it with less new cultivated land or replacing high-quality cultivated land with inferior land shall be resolutely stopped," he said.
On optimizing the structure of land use, Liu said farmland protection will be incorporated into integrated conservation and systematic governance of mountains, rivers, forests, farmland, lakes, grasslands and deserts. Under the country's land territorial space planning, the ministry will work to coordinate farmland distribution with ecological space optimization, raise farmland quality and improve the ecological conditions of farmland.
As for strengthening of supervision over farmland use, Liu said the ministry will urge local governments at all levels to fulfill their responsibilities, bolster routine law enforcement, and strictly investigate illegal occupation or damage of farmland in violation of law.
China to strictly control arable land use with integrated protection: official
