Higher standard

"In rural areas, when young people marry and start a family, their parents reallocate property, and more important, divide their farmland," Dong said.

"As a result, villagers' farmland plots are becoming smaller in size but are rising in number with growth of the population, although the total area of a village hardly increased after generations of cultivation," Dong said. In Dalu, the cropland is owned by more than 2,000 villagers, he added.

This area, located in the middle of the Yangtze and Huaihe rivers watershed, is home to undulating terrain.

In the past, rice was the most important crop in Changfeng county, and the villagers owned ponds to water the rice. Some ponds were owned by one family, while others were shared among several households.

"When there was a drought, irrigation was extremely hard, and numerous conflicts arose between the villagers over the use of water, Dong said.

Yang Xiaohu, an official at the county's bureau of agriculture and rural affairs, said a high-standard cropland construction project conducted through public bidding typically covers an area of several hundred hectares.

From 2012 to 2021, the county invested 2.4 billion yuan on 110 such projects in 187 villages with a total area of 64,000 hectares, the bureau said.

For each project, the government required that the number of plots should fall by no more than 70 percent. The bureau said that roads suitable for use by agricultural machinery should reach all plots that were transformed.