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China aims to preserve food crops area
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has asked its local governments to replace farmland earmarked for development with an identical-sized plot elsewhere, as the world's most populous country struggles to ensure enough land for food crops.
Beijing aims to keep arable land area at or above 121 million hectares by 2010 and 120 million hectares a decade later, the government's Xinhua agency said.
Officials will be expected to reclaim the appropriate amount of land for agricultural use before any arable plot is authorized for other purposes, the report added.
The policy will take effect from 2009, the report quoted Ministry of Land and Resources official Huang Hetu as saying.
The only projects that will be exempt are military ones and major national infrastructure efforts like the west-east gas pipeline and the south-north water transfer scheme, Huang added.
Xinhua did not say how the policy would be implemented or what punishments transgressors could expect.
China's supply of agricultural land has plummeted, displaced by urban sprawl, factories, quarries, and development zones.
It is not clear how Beijing expects officials to find land for farmers. In recent years the central government has reversed the reclamation of some marginal land, including wetlands and hilltops, because of the negative environmental impact.
(Reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison, Editing by Peter Blackburn)
