South China's winter grain, oilseed area up 700,000 hectares

Winter grain and rapeseed crop acreage in China's 15 southern provinces increased nearly 700,000 hectares from a year earlier to 24 million hectares, the Ministry of Agriculture said Thursday (December 4).

China has 9.3 million hectares of unused land in the south which could be cultivated, of which 72 percent could easily be developed as agricultural land, the ministry said in a statement published on its Web site.

China aims to develop 3.3 million hectares of this unused land into agricultural land by 2015, and another 3.3 million hectares by 2020, it said.

Part of these lands will be used to grow 3 million hectares of rapeseed, 460,000 hectares of corn and 2 million hectares of potatoes, it said.