Rural contracted arable land transferred area accounts for 28.8% of the total area

Chinese Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said on the 4th at the Ministry of Agriculture's land transfer video conference that as of the end of June 2014, the area of rural contracted arable land transferred nationwide reached 380 million mu, accounting for 28.8% of the total contracted arable land area.

In recent years, the increase in the proportion of contracted arable land transferred nationwide has expanded year by year. Last year the transfer proportion rose by 4.8 percentage points, and in the first half of this year it rose by another 2.8 percentage points. Last year the area of rural contracted arable land transferred nationwide reached 340 million mu, and in the first half of this year another 40 million mu was transferred.

According to reports, at present rural large specialized households of various types number 3.17 million, family farms 870,000, farmers' cooperatives 1.24 million, and leading enterprises in agricultural industrialization 120,000.

Han Changfu believes that guiding the orderly transfer of rural land management rights and developing appropriately scaled agricultural operations is an urgent need for developing modern agriculture, an urgent need for upholding and improving the rural basic management system, an urgent need for safeguarding farmers' lawful rights and interests and maintaining rural harmony and stability, and an urgent need for properly resolving prominent problems in land transfer and scaled operations.

Han Changfu pointed out that it is necessary to grasp the foundation of stabilizing contractual relations, ensure the orderly transfer of land management rights, and keep the degree of scaled operation appropriate.