August 31, 2010
 

China works at restoring farmland

China working at restoring arable land to agricultural use through better land management laws, the Ministry of Land Resources said.

China will restore 37.9 million mu (2.5 million hectares) of land to agriculture by 2020 and limit areas taken for non-farming development to 30 million mu, vice minister Wang Shiyuan said.

Population growth, social development and natural disasters will inevitably decrease total and per capita arable land mass, said Wang, who made the remark in a parliamentary hearing on grain safety. The government will improve land management laws and increase incentives to discourage misuse of the resource, he said.

China's farmable land declined by 123 million mu since 1997, which has made keeping total areas to at least 1.8 billion mu a "red line" that must not be breached, Wang said.