December 9, 2003

 

 

China Enacting Legislation To Bring Farmland Under Control As Grain Production Fell

 

China recently announced a plan to protect its limited farmland as grain production falls and local governments requisition croplands in a blind pursuit of cashing in on a nationwide real estate and development boom.

 

The central government said it plans to enact legislation to bring farmland under strict control and promote the reform of the government's land requisition and management systems, Xinhua news agency reported Monday.

 

China's local governments, who monopolize the sale of land-use rights, are making huge profits by buying land from farmers at low prices, and selling it to developers at higher prices, Xinhua said.

 

Such profits have become a "secondary source of revenue" in some localities, resulting in rampant corruption, it said.

 

The rapid expansion of China's urban areas in the past decade, coupled with increased real estate and property development in rural areas are resulting in huge losses of cropland, Ma Xiaohe, a researcher at the State Development and Reform Commission told the China Economic Times.

 

China, which must feed one fifth of the world's population on 7% of the world's arable land, is facing a food security crisis as economic development eats away at available land, Ma said.

 

From 1998 to 2002, Chinese croplands were reduced by some 148 million mu (equivalent to 9.9 million hectares or 24.5 million acres), largely due to requisitioning of land by local governments, Ma said.

 

China's arable cropland was estimated at about 130 million hectares in 1996.

 

Its grain output dipped from a record high of 512 million tons in 1998 to 457 million tons last year as the government tried to bring down stockpiles and free up farmland for more lucrative cash crops.

 

Output for this year is expected to come in between 440 and 450 million tons, giving China a grain shortfall of up to 45 million tons, Liu Zhiren, a researcher at the Agricultural Economic Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, told AFP.

 

Xinhua said farmers have lodged many complaints about land requisition with the government, and studies have been carried out for four years to map out a policy for reform.

 

Chang Jiaxing, deputy director of the Law Enforcement and Supervision Bureau under the Ministry of Land and Resources, revealed more than 100,000 cases of illegal land requisition were reported in the first half of this year.

Chang said about 39,133 hectares of land were involved, including 19,400 hectares of farmland.

 

Secretary-general of the China Society of Land Science, Huang Xiaohu, said the reforms should focus on the respect of the farmers' right of the land, giving them a say in negotiation over requisition and preventing local officials from buying at will.

 

In China, land is public property and is divided into land for agricultural use, land for construction purposes and land to be kept intact.

 

Under the land management law, work units and individuals, either urbanites or farmers, can contract the right to use land under the condition that they will not use it for other purposes.

 

However, experts said the highly profitable trading of land-use rights has created an economic bubble although the booming real estate industry has contributed in some ways to national economic growth.

 

The nationwide craze for construction of housing and development zones has led to heavy losses of farmland, experts said.

 

Experts hope the establishment of a standardized land management system will benefit farmers, stop illegal transfer of land-use rights and effectively protect farmland and grain production.