Thoughts and Countermeasures for Cultivated Land Protection in the Period of Social Transition

I. Current Situation: Seeking the Balance Point among “Ecology, Rights and Interests, and Food Security”

Currently, China's grain output is the result of high technology, high input, and low taxes, but it has also caused the ecological problems of cultivated land resources to continuously worsen, and the problem of low returns from farmers' cultivated land has not been resolved. In response, we should coordinate the domestic ecological pressure on cultivated land with the surplus grain potential abroad, and build a new framework for China's cultivated land security in the three dimensions of “ecology, rights and interests, and food security.”

China's national conditions today have undergone tremendous changes compared with those at the time when the cultivated land protection system centered on the balance of cultivated land occupation and compensation was implemented, mainly in three aspects:

First, China's grain output has continued to increase. Focusing closely on the issue of grain self-sufficiency, the Chinese government has not only implemented the world's strictest cultivated land protection system, but has also continuously increased investment in agricultural breeding technology, farmland cultivation techniques, and farmland infrastructure, and has carried out policies to reduce and exempt agricultural taxes, as well as implemented cultivated land protection compensation mechanisms in some regions. To safeguard food security, the state's series of policies and high-input safeguard mechanisms in science and technology, extension, and production have created one legend after another in grain production. By 2013, China's grain production had achieved 10 consecutive years of increase, and the national total grain output exceeded the 600 million ton mark for the first time.

Second, the ecological problems of China's cultivated land resources have continuously worsened. In 2013, the “cadmium rice incident” in Hunan had already exposed the severity of China's farmland soil pollution problem. Liu Yaolin, a professor at Wuhan University, pointed out that of China's 120 million hectares of cultivated land, about 8.3% is polluted, especially in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions. Zhang Fusuo of China Agricultural University and others also pointed out that farmland soil acidification in China is severe, mainly due to excessive nitrogen fertilizer application. There are also reports saying that groundwater in northern China is declining rapidly, affecting not only food security but also ecological security and the water use of 430 million people, and that the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain shows an obvious trend of desertification. Even in Northeast China, which has the best natural resource endowment in China, according to Niu Zhenguo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a large amount of wetlands in the Northeast have been converted into land for grain production, and the black soil in the Northeast suffers from severe water and soil erosion, the soil is becoming thinner, and soil organic matter content has dropped from 50 grams to 100 grams per kilogram in the 1970s to about 20 grams, so the quality of the Northeast granary is declining.

Third, Chinese farmers' returns from cultivated land have continuously decreased, and the protection of cultivated land rights and interests needs to be improved. The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly pointed out that the market will play a decisive role in resource allocation, and this decision will inevitably affect China's cultivated land use and put higher demands on the protection of Chinese farmers' rights and interests. Chinese farmers own cultivated land and are the implementers of grain production, but due to their limited scale, the efficiency of grain production is low. Therefore, from the perspective of economic value attributes, cultivated land resources are a low-lying area in China's land value. The advancement of rural land marketization will inevitably lead capital to gradually penetrate cultivated land resources, thereby significantly driving up the value of cultivated land resources. In future changes, how farmers with limited cultivated land resources face the temptation of rising cultivated land resource value, continue to hold resources, and avoid changing from farmers into displaced people requires not only farmers' own wisdom, but also the state's protection of the bottom line of farmers' cultivated land rights and interests in the design of the cultivated land protection system, so as to maintain rural stability.

Compared with the enormous pressure faced by cultivated land resources, China's foreign exchange reserves also carry huge risks. After 30 years of rapid development, China has already possessed enormous foreign exchange reserves, but they are constantly affected by US finance and international policies, and their real value is being eroded. But this also gives China the conditions to import grain resources internationally and replace domestic shortages of water and soil resources. Compared with China, countries such as the United States, Brazil, and Canada possess irreplaceable potential in water and soil resources, and consideration can be given to using foreign exchange to ease the pressure on China's water and soil resources, reduce cultivation intensity, convert polluted cultivated land to other uses, and lower the intensity of cultivated land use in areas of excessive groundwater extraction. Therefore, China's cultivated land resource protection must be re-examined from a global perspective, coordinating domestic cultivated land resource pressure and foreign grain surplus potential, and the time is ripening for building a new framework pattern for China's cultivated land security in “ecology, rights and interests, and food security.”

II. Approach: Coordinate the Use of Both Foreign and Domestic Cultivated Land

To improve the ecological condition of cultivated land resources, it is necessary to gradually reduce the intensity of cultivated land use and delineate cultivated land use exit zones, use-conversion type zones, use-intensity reduction zones, and sustainable resource use zones. Then, by drawing on foreign water and soil resources, and based on annual grain import volumes, propose use control and safeguard measures for allowing China's cultivated land resources to recuperate and improve ecological security.

China's cultivated land resource protection is no longer only a food security issue, but also an issue of protecting farmers' rights and interests, and even more an ecological security issue. Therefore, by taking advantage of the favorable domestic grain production situation and enormous foreign exchange reserves, it is possible to gradually establish a new cultivated land protection system conducive to the ecological security, rights and interests security, and food security of cultivated land resources, namely “importing international grain to replace domestic water and soil shortages; allowing cultivated land resources to recuperate to improve ecological security; and establishing a development rights transfer mechanism to protect farmers' cultivated land rights.”

First, the “ecological security” of China's cultivated land resources can only rely on itself. To comprehensively enhance the ecological security of China's cultivated land resources, it is necessary to gradually reduce the intensity of cultivated land resource use and allow it to recuperate. This requires defining a bottom line for cultivated land resource security, identifying the ecological distribution characteristics of China's cultivated land resources based on the quantitative distribution characteristics and spatial variation characteristics of quality of cultivated land resources, and delineating cultivated land use exit zones, use-conversion type zones, use-intensity reduction zones, and sustainable resource use zones. For use exit zones, it is necessary to analyze the relationship between cultivated land resource distribution and ecological background around the issues of China's three major geographic terraces and major river basins, scientifically define the relationship between cultivated land and ecological land types such as forest land, wetlands, grassland, tidal flats, and lakes, identify the key ecological limiting factors of cultivated land production, delineate the distribution of China's cultivated land resources, and determine the scope of returning farmland and the goals of ecological construction. For use-conversion zones, it is necessary to scientifically analyze the types of farmland soil pollution, spatial distribution characteristics, and the relationship between soil pollution and use patterns, and, combining the geochemical element survey of the Ministry of Land and Resources and the soil pollution survey results of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, analyze the relationship between soil pollution and land use, determine soil pollution type zones, and propose conversion methods for polluted land use. For intensity reduction zones, it is necessary to scientifically analyze the relationship between cultivated land use intensity and the sustainable use of regional cultivated land resources, and, based on the characteristics of national cultivated land resource use intensity and its ecological and environmental impacts, delineate type zones for reducing cultivated land resource intensity, such as the Huang-Huai-Hai and Northeast Plain black soil areas, which are regions and spaces where land use intensity needs to be reduced. Based on the relationship among the three circles, propose a spatial blueprint for the sustainable use of China's cultivated land resources and realize the ecological security of China's cultivated land resources.

Second, the “food security” of China's cultivated land resources can appropriately draw on foreign water and soil resources. By taking advantage of China's foreign exchange reserves and the historical opportunity of increased grain output, build a food security concept of “storing grain in the soil” and import water and soil resources to ease the pressure on the security of China's cultivated land resources. According to research by Chen Xiwen, director of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, and others, in 2010 China's imported agricultural products were already equivalent to using about 600 million mu of cultivated land resources abroad. But up to now, we have not examined from a national strategic perspective how China's food security should skillfully use foreign exchange reserves to implement replacement of water and soil resources. Therefore, combining the characteristics of China's grain production and its water and soil resource consumption, it is necessary to deeply analyze the use of foreign water and soil resources to import grain crops such as wheat, soybeans, and rice, so as to replace the production capacity lost due to returning farmland, fallowing, and converted cultivation.

Third, the “farmers' rights and interests” in China's cultivated land resources can only rely on the central government for protection. The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has already proposed increasing farmers' property income, and the prerequisite and foundation for ensuring property income is that farmers enjoy development rights and have an equal market position in market competition, so as to ensure the fair realization of their property rights. For industrial and commercial capital seeking to enter rural land, Chinese farmers are still in an unfavorable position in many aspects such as property rights awareness, resource prices, and bidding levels; compared with the high asset price characteristics of urban land, the cultivated land resource value of China's rural land is still at a historical low. In this way, a disequilibrium has formed between the low price of China's cultivated land resources and the high level of farmers' livelihood security, so that farmers' cultivated land resource rights and interests can only be safeguarded by the central government.

III. Recommendations: Shift from Implementing Rigid Indicators to Achieving Three Securities

Under the new situation, to achieve the three securities of cultivated land resource protection, it is necessary to transform the approach to cultivated land protection: first, establish use control based on cultivated land ecological security; second, establish a shared responsibility mechanism to ensure food security; and third, establish a market-oriented supervision mechanism for cultivated land resources that safeguards farmers' rights and interests.

The traditional cultivated land protection system has mostly been implemented through administrative means, whose main feature is that, based on the quantitative requirements for the total amount of cultivated land resources to ensure food security, rigid control indicators such as “cultivated land retention volume, basic farmland protection volume, and total construction land volume” are decomposed level by level through administrative levels such as the provincial, municipal, county, and township levels. The advantage of this method is that it is easy to assess, while the disadvantage is information asymmetry. Cultivated land protection has highlighted food security, but the protection of ecological security and farmers' rights and interests has been weakened. To achieve the three securities of cultivated land resource protection, it is necessary to transform the approach to cultivated land protection and implement innovations in the following three aspects:

First, establish use control based on cultivated land ecological security. The land and resources departments should clearly define the strategic positioning of the ecological security of China's cultivated land resources, scientifically construct the ecological security pattern of China's cultivated land resources, delineate cultivated land spatial zones, propose use control rules, innovate land consolidation models, establish a cultivated land resource ecological model that unifies market and administration and links upper and lower levels, and implement a cultivated land use protection mechanism centered on the transfer of development rights.

Second, establish a shared responsibility mechanism to ensure food security. The quantity and quality of cultivated land resources are the guarantee and cornerstone of food security. The quantity of China's cultivated land resources is managed by the Ministry of Land and Resources, but quality issues involve departments such as the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and the National Development and Reform Commission. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a shared responsibility mechanism for cultivated land quality protection, clarify the responsibilities of relevant departments for cultivated land quality protection, and study innovative cultivated land protection mechanisms under a shared protection responsibility mechanism.

Third, establish a market-oriented supervision mechanism for cultivated land resources that safeguards farmers' rights and interests. The marketization of rural cultivated land resource circulation is continuously taking shape and growing stronger. Issues surrounding cultivated land resource circulation involve the ownership, contracted management rights, development rights, and use rights of cultivated land resources. Therefore, to safeguard farmers' rights, it is necessary to refine existing cultivated land resource rights, determine farmers' rights and their composition, clarify the conditions and requirements for rights transfer, and use land rights to safeguard farmers' rights and interests. At the same time, it is necessary to establish a supervision system compatible with cultivated land circulation, including authoritative evaluation institutions for determining cultivated land categories, recognizing cultivated land quality, evaluating cultivated land value, and assessing cultivated land pollution and various impacts. Therefore, from a market-oriented perspective, it is necessary to establish a market-oriented supervision system for cultivated land resource use that safeguards the rights and interests of Chinese farmers.