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Raiders of farmland

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-09 18:03

The soaring food prices worldwide should make the Chinese government more sensitive to violations in the transfer of the land use right, as these cut into the ever-dwindling area of arable land and finally threaten the food security of this populous nation.

The latest investigation published by the National Audit Office last week suggests that buying land on lease from villagers for non-agricultural use, instead of through outright acquisition, still poses a serious problem in many localities. It is a form of violation of the land transfer norms that has been rampant in recent years.

This illegal practice is aimed at circumventing the stipulation that the occupation of basic farmland for non-agricultural use must get the approval from the State Council. For villagers, the rent from leasing their fields is much higher than the income from growing crops on them.

Yet, the threat this offense has posed to the central government's goal of maintaining the area of arable land at no less than 120 million hectares can be disastrous. The country's stock of farmland currently stands at 122 million hectares.

On the one hand, such illegal transfers may keep the central government in the dark about the exact stock of farmland as the amount of leased land is obviously accounted as arable fields in the land census.

On the other hand, once such cases are found out, it would usually be too late to restore the developed land as farm fields. Even if mandatory measures are taken to pull down the structures and return the occupied land to farming, it would take years before villagers can grow crops on it again. It also is a waste of resources.

For villagers, their long-term economic losses from such illegal deals can be unimaginably heavy although the immediate gain is usually too tempting. They can never expect to get any legal protection whenever the deal is unilaterally scrapped by the other parties because of its illegitimacy. In addition, they get no compensation when the illegal deals are found out.

So such tricks not only eat into the precious arable land, but are also against the long-term interest of villagers.

The central government mapped out more severe penalties concerning violations in land transfers. The law says that the officials involved in serious land use violations can be removed from their positions or even fired.

If there is a genuine crackdown on the offenders, hopes of saving farmland from illegal occupation will brighten.