By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-31 11:52:57 | Updated at 2025-04-02 02:46:17
1 day ago
Cultivating conditions for the widespread roll-out of advanced agricultural technologies across China, the central government has sown more seeds of food security with plans to transform all “eligible permanent basic farmland” into high-standard farmland by 2035.
Arable land represents the foundation for the plan, which was jointly issued by the General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council.
Ensuring that farmland is maintained to high agricultural standards – becoming “well-facilitated” farmland – “requires sci-tech support for disaster prevention and control, soil quality and fertility improvement, and farmland management, based on information technology”, according to Xinhua.
The plan sets two phased targets: developing 1.35 billion mu (90 million hectares, 222 million acres) of high-standard farmland by 2030, and transforming all eligible permanent basic farmland into high-standard farmland by 2035, totalling 455 million mu of upgraded farmland, Xinhua said on Sunday. By the end of last year, China had developed over 1 billion mu of high-standard farmland.
When the goal is to grow good grains quickly, high-standard farmland outperforms regular farmland by saving on water, fertiliser and other expenses by more than 10 per cent per mu, while boosting grain output by 10-20 per cent, according to Xinhua.
