Xinhua, Beijing :
China is rolling out a major rural land reform which aims to promote large-scale farming and consolidate unused small patches of farm land under larger cooperatives.
The reform scheme comes as China is experiencing a continuing process of industrialization and urbanization, in which more farmers are migrating to cities for jobs, leaving behind their contracted farm lands over which they have use rights.
“More and more farmers see agriculture as a secondary job. Some farmers no longer attach importance to growing crops as they used to. Some lands are even left unattended,” Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said in an interview with Xinhua on Friday.
The transition has triggered rising concerns over food security facing the world’s most populous country.
The key solution is to promote the concentrated use of farm lands, nurture diversified agricultural businesses, and ensure that agriculture is also a profitable business, Han said, adding that the reform plan, which has been reviewed and passed by the central authorities, will be an important policy guide for rural land reforms and agriculture management.
“The transfer of rural land use rights as well as concentrated agricultural development is a significant issue for China’s rural development. It is also a key agenda in China’s deepening of rural reforms,” he said.
According to government data, the number of Chinese migrant workers from rural regions in 2013 reached almost 270 million, which accounted for 45 percent of the total work force in rural areas.
