China Never Has Too Much Arable Land, and More of It Gives Better Conditions for Raising Agricultural Competitiveness
The more arable land there is, the better the conditions for raising China's agricultural competitiveness, and the easier it is for farmers to specialize. The most effective way to protect arable land is not to rely on administrative orders, but to let market mechanisms play a greater regulatory role.
Recently, national leaders prominently emphasized the importance of protecting arable land, drawing public attention. In fact, protecting arable land has long been regarded as a basic national policy in China, supported by a package of specific policies. But protecting arable land has not formed a high degree of consensus across all sectors of society in China. In land management practice, this policy has encountered a variety of dissolving factors, so much so that senior figures dare not take it lightly.
In China, the reasons for protecting arable land are indeed quite sufficient.
From the nature of the agricultural economy, there is never too much arable land. China's arable land appears to be quite plentiful. Because we once collected agricultural tax from farmers according to the amount of land area, farmers concealed some land. In some places, the concealed arable land could reach 30% of the total arable land area. Therefore, the actual national arable land area far exceeds 1.8 billion mu. If we sow 1.8 billion mu of grain on 1.3 billion mu of land (in some places more than 2 seasons can be sown in 1 year), according to the actual situation in China's main grain-producing areas, with an average output of 500 kg of grain per mu, the total grain output would be very considerable, so much so that even at China's peak population it would not all be used up. However, this method of calculation is wrong.
The main problem facing China's grain production is not whether the absolute quantity is sufficient, but how high the cost of grain is and whether the price of grain is competitive on the market. Excessive pursuit of per-mu yield is often uneconomical. If there is enough arable land, we can use less chemical fertilizer and pesticide to produce the same amount of grain, and we can also reduce labor costs by expanding scale operations. Therefore, the more arable land there is, the better the conditions for raising China's agricultural competitiveness, and the easier it is for farmers to specialize.
Some people do not agree with the “red line of 1.8 billion mu of arable land protection”, fearing that this policy will affect China's urbanization process, and some friends may attribute rising housing prices to this policy. This reasoning does not hold. Urbanization is of course very important; China's urbanization rate must gradually reach more than 80%, otherwise there is no hope for agricultural modernization. But China already has a great deal of urban land, it is just that the efficiency of its use is not high.
The most effective way to protect arable land is not to rely on administrative orders, but to let market mechanisms play a greater regulatory role. First, establish farmers' land property rights. When agricultural land is converted to construction land, it cannot be decided only by “quotas” and by officials, but should ultimately be decided by farming households. Second, strictly limit the scope of compulsory land requisition. Only land occupied by public facilities may be requisitioned by the government. The rather vague requisition condition of “public interest” should be abandoned. Third, land used for industrial and commercial projects should follow market prices, and the state should no longer requisition land. When it conforms to planning, collectively owned land can directly enter the market. Through the flexibility of land planning, the state can introduce competition into the land supply mechanism and prevent land prices from being too high.
Finally, establish a more effective arable land protection mechanism. The main drawback of the current basic farmland protection system is that the designation of basic farmland is rather fragmented and is distributed in a crisscrossing and mixed way with construction land, making it extremely easy for arable land to be nibbled away. We can consider learning from good foreign experience and establish an agricultural protection zone system. The state can designate large contiguous agricultural protection zones, and stipulate that within agricultural protection zones, apart from national infrastructure construction such as roads, all other non-agricultural land occupation can only decrease and cannot increase. Doing so can greatly reduce the regulatory cost of arable land protection, reduce land speculation eyeing the conversion of arable land into construction land, encourage land consolidation, and increase the effective arable land area. Without these reforms, it will probably be very difficult to achieve the goal of effectively protecting arable land.