Farmland planted with trees cannot be rectified for 6 years; farmland protection becomes empty talk on paper
"Document-style" law enforcement causes farmland protection in many places to become "empty talk on paper"
Why can't farmland planted with trees be rectified for 6 years? In an investigation, reporters from Economic Information Daily found that even under the country's implementation of the "strictest farmland protection system," some localities at the grassroots level still had cases of illegal occupation of farmland that had long been discovered, but were not rectified or corrected because relevant functional departments of grassroots governments carried out "document-style" law enforcement. This caused farmland protection to become "empty talk on paper" at the implementation level, and the unmet economic demands of localities were an important reason.
Experts suggest that to fully implement farmland protection policies, supervision and accountability of grassroots functional departments should be strengthened; at the same time, comprehensive consideration should be given from multiple aspects. Behind the phenomenon that "those born in the 1970s are unwilling to farm, those born in the 1980s do not know how to farm, and those born in the 1990s do not mention farming" is the fact that land's appeal to farmers has begun to decline. The system should be fundamentally improved to increase farmland returns.
"Document-style" law enforcement fails to protect
In 2008, the Jinxi County Land and Resources Bureau implemented a dryland development project called "Create Land, Increase Grain, Enrich the People" in order to supplement farmland occupied by key projects. In April 2009, when the project was completed, a total of more than 1,700 mu of new dryland had been developed, and Jiangxi Zhengbang Forestry Development Co., Ltd. obtained 29.5 years of contracted management rights through bidding.
According to relevant national regulations on farmland protection and project acceptance, the contract signed between the Jinxi County Land and Resources Bureau and Zhengbang Forestry Company stipulated that the contractor could only plant crops such as rapeseed, soybeans, watermelons, and corn on the newly developed farmland, and could not arbitrarily change the land use.
In fact, in the second year after Zhengbang Forestry Company contracted the land, citing losses from planting crops, it began large-scale planting of camphor economic forest on the contracted land. In June 2010, the Jinxi County Land and Resources Bureau discovered the company's violation and issued a notice ordering rectification within a time limit.
In mid-July 2016, reporters saw at the site of the dryland developed in Jinxi County that year that although 6 years had passed since the Jinxi County Land and Resources Bureau issued the rectification notice, the company had not restored these farmland uses. Zheng Fuchang, the person in charge of Zhengbang Forestry Company in Jinxi County, admitted that they knew changing the land use was a violation, but from the perspective of the company's returns, planting camphor was more profitable.
During interviews, reporters found that this was not the only case in which relevant functional departments of grassroots governments used similar "document-style" law enforcement, causing farmland protection to exist in name only.
In Jiujiang County, Jiangxi, the local land and resources department discovered in 2014 that Liu Yingyong, a retired cadre of the local forestry bureau, had illegally occupied farmland to build a house. However, over the following year and a half, the county's joint law enforcement department merely issued documents and verbal notices requiring the person to rectify the matter, and the matter remained unresolved. Only after media exposure did the locality take effective measures to handle it.
"Document-style" law enforcement in farmland protection is not uncommon. In an incident in Yangjiang City, Guangdong Province, where tens of thousands of square meters of agricultural land were illegally requisitioned by a local individual boss, starting in 2008, the local land department issued 4 administrative penalty decisions on land within 8 years, but there was no substantive mandatory rectification action. Not only was the illegal land requisition not stopped, but the occupied area became larger and larger.
Documents as "tokens" cannot block economic interest demands
Reporters learned that although most of the newly developed dryland in Jinxi County became corporate economic forest and the land use was changed, the locality still included this dryland as farmland in the category of requisition-compensation balance.
Wu Shaohua, director of the Jinxi County Land and Resources Bureau, admitted that doing so was certainly inappropriate.
The reason why the land and resources department neither forced the company to rectify nor included this "farmland" that was no longer farmland in the requisition-compensation balance category was the pressure to support local economic development.
Wu Shaohua said that on the one hand, Jinxi County was developing rapidly and had a large demand for land, so the land department could only solve it through the farmland requisition-compensation balance policy. On the other hand, Jinxi County's spice industry, which uses camphor as a raw material, was developed, and Zhengbang Forestry Company was a large enterprise. Planting camphor was beneficial to the county's economic development, so it was difficult to take mandatory measures.
At the same time, Wu Shaohua said that because no irrigation facilities had been built, that dryland had shortcomings when used as farmland. At a time when some good farmland in rural areas was left abandoned, if it were required to be used only for planting crops, it would be difficult to contract out.
Zhao Songji, deputy director of the Jiujiang County Land and Resources Bureau, told reporters that "document-style" law enforcement was sometimes also "helpless." For governing illegal rural construction, the land and resources department had limited grassroots staff and found it difficult to keep track of the rectification status of every illegal act at all times.
"In addition, the land department, which bears primary responsibility for farmland protection, has no compulsory law enforcement power over illegal acts that damage farmland. The compulsory enforcement of some penalty measures must go through court procedures," Zhao Songji said. Because it was rather troublesome, sometimes situations inevitably arose in which "document" penalties replaced actual law enforcement.
At the same time, another cadre of the Jiujiang County Land and Resources Bureau told reporters that regarding retired cadres building houses in violation of regulations, the county land and resources bureau and the township certainly bore responsibility. However, because rural homestead applications had been relatively difficult in recent years, building before approval and illegally occupying farmland to build houses in rural areas was indeed relatively common. When residents' housing needs were involved, management was indeed relatively difficult.
At the same time, reporters also learned that when handling illegal occupation and use of land, some areas even had situations of substituting fines for management. This practice reduced the willingness of functional departments to enforce the law strictly, and "document-style" law enforcement through a single piece of paper instead became a "shield" for avoiding responsibility for "inaction."
During the interview, a villager who wanted to sell farmland-built houses to reporters said that locally, if one "could find the right people," even if illegally built houses for sale were discovered, as long as some money was paid, there would be no accountability. Another interviewee who illegally occupied farmland to build a house clearly stated that the reason he had been able to build the house was precisely that the relevant department had not pursued the matter further after imposing a fine.
Farmland protection still needs strengthened supervision
As of the time the reporter submitted the article, relevant departments in Jiujiang County had demolished Liu Yingyong's illegally built house through joint law enforcement, and decided to launch a special campaign throughout the county to protect farmland, and to hold accountable the main responsible units and responsible persons for the illegal house construction caused by failure to conscientiously perform duties.
The land and resources department of Jinxi County once again issued a notice to the responsible party to correct illegal and non-compliant acts and restore farmland use. Wu Shaohua said that if the company still failed to rectify this time, the company's contracted management rights to the farmland would be recovered in September this year.
In June 2016, with the consent of the State Council, the "Adjustment Plan for the National Overall Land Use Plan (2006-2020)," organized and compiled by the Ministry of Land and Resources together with relevant departments, was printed and implemented. The Adjustment Plan required adherence to the strictest farmland protection system and the strictest land conservation system.
A review by reporters found that in recent years, in addition to the difficulty of completely prohibiting illegal and non-compliant occupation of farmland by individuals and enterprises, incidents in which some government departments knowingly violated the law and were summoned for talks or notified due to illegal occupation of farmland also occurred from time to time. In August 2015, the official website of the Ministry of Land and Resources notified 6 cases of illegal and non-compliant land and resources cases, including the illegal land occupation case in Hechuan Industrial Park, Chongqing; the case of illegal occupation of basic farmland to develop the Minning Industrial City in Yongning County, Yinchuan City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region; and the case of Inner Mongolia Shanzhong Energy Group Co., Ltd. illegally occupying farmland to build a photovoltaic power plant.
Relevant experts believe that whether it is "document-style" law enforcement protection for illegal occupation of farmland by individuals and social economic organizations, or illegal occupation of farmland in some localities, although some objective reasons exist, the problem reflected in essence is still that current awareness of farmland protection is not strong and law enforcement is not strict.
Farmland protection concerns national food security and is an overall strategic issue related to China's economic and social sustainable development. Li Guoxiang, a researcher at the Institute of Rural Development under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that behavior that protects farmland only on paper and in slogans must be taken seriously. Relevant departments should investigate this, hold accountable units and relevant responsible persons that fail to perform their duties, and strengthen the awareness of grassroots governments and functional departments in implementing farmland protection responsibilities.
At the same time, Li Guoxiang said that in addition to strengthening supervision and accountability, relevant departments should also gain an in-depth understanding of the deeper reasons behind these incidents and some objective difficulties in grassroots farmland protection, and seek solutions.
Experts: Protecting farmland should focus on root causes
In addition to strengthening supervision and punishment, farmland returns should be fundamentally increased
In recent years, systems, regulations, and documents on farmland protection successively issued at the national level and in various places show that China is a major agricultural production country and a major population country, and farmland protection is of great significance for safeguarding national food security. Awareness of farmland protection in various places has also clearly increased.
But at the same time, relevant functional departments in some grassroots areas adopted "document-style" law enforcement protection for illegal occupation and use of farmland, such as rural illegal construction and enterprises arbitrarily changing the use of transferred land, causing farmland protection to become an empty phrase. This reflects that some places still have many problems in strengthening farmland protection.
During interviews, reporters found that because the reform of the rural homestead system has just started in China, institutional defects have caused the current management of rural homestead use to be chaotic. Old houses cannot be withdrawn or demolished, and farmers' newly added homestead needs are difficult to satisfy. This has led to the contradiction between rural illegal construction and farmland protection, which is also a dilemma encountered by grassroots land and resources departments in law enforcement.
According to the "2015 China Land and Resources Bulletin" released in April 2016, as of the end of 2015, China's farmland area was 2.025 billion mu. Nationwide, farmland area decreased by 4.5 million mu due to construction occupation, disaster damage, ecological conversion of farmland, agricultural adjustment, and other reasons; farmland area increased by 3.51 million mu through land consolidation, agricultural structural adjustment, and other means; and net farmland area decreased by 990,000 mu during the year. The total area of construction land nationwide was 578 million mu, with 7.6 million mu of newly added construction land.
Relevant experts said that although various places have compensated for reduced farmland through means such as developing reserve land resources and land consolidation, the reality is that, on the one hand, the country's developable reserve land resources are becoming fewer and fewer; on the other hand, newly developed farmland is difficult to effectively guarantee in quality due to later management and other issues. The situation for farmland protection remains very severe.
On how to effectively protect farmland and solve the difficulties and problems existing in farmland protection, some experts believe that it is necessary both to strictly supervise and hold accountable grassroots governments and relevant functional departments that fail to protect farmland, and to fundamentally improve related systems such as the later-stage use management of supplementary farmland under requisition-compensation balance and rural homestead use management.
Yin Xiaojian, a researcher at the Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences, said that in the case of supplementing farmland through requisition-compensation balance, in addition to standardizing the implementation of relevant land development projects in procedures such as project approval, implementation, and acceptance, later-stage specific management and protection measures should also be further clarified.
In 2015, Yujiang County, Jiangxi, was listed as a pilot for national rural homestead system reform. Cai Guohua, director of the Yujiang County Land and Resources Bureau, told reporters that six major problems, namely multiple homesteads per household, large house areas, chaotic layout and orientation, many illegal house constructions, chaotic private transactions, and serious hollowing out, were common problems in rural homesteads. Before the homestead system reform, 600 to 700 rural illegal houses appeared in the county every year. Moreover, due to insufficient law enforcement personnel and difficulty in enforcement, they were difficult to handle.
"On the one hand, out of consideration for farmland protection, control over newly added homesteads is relatively strict; on the other hand, tight supply makes it difficult to prohibit illegal construction occupying farmland." Cai Guohua said that to solve the problem of illegal construction occupying farmland in rural areas, in addition to severe crackdowns, the fundamental approach is still to accelerate rural homestead system reform, revitalize existing stock, and strengthen rural construction planning.
Protecting farmland requires attention both to quantity and to quality. Recently, the Ministry of Land and Resources issued the "Guiding Opinions on Combining Supplementing Farmland Quantity with Improving Farmland Quality to Implement Requisition-Compensation Balance." Relevant experts said that the new policy of "promoting farmland quality improvement and transformation, and implementing farmland requisition-compensation balance through a combination of supplementation and improvement" can be said to be a reform measure forced out by circumstances. The purpose is both to guarantee reasonable land demand for economic construction and to implement the strictest farmland protection system, fully leverage the remedial role of farmland requisition-compensation balance for farmland occupied by industrialization and urbanization, and hold the red line for farmland. At present, a red line has been drawn for the protection and supervision of farmland quantity, and information technology can be used for supervision. However, more attention needs to be paid to the decline in farmland quality caused by problems such as unreasonable application of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, excessive use of farmland, ineffective later-stage fertilization and management of newly added farmland, and incomplete infrastructure. Establishing a corresponding farmland quality monitoring and evaluation reporting system, as well as building monitoring sites, should be carried out as soon as possible.
Some grassroots cadres also pointed out that how to raise farmers' awareness of farmland protection is also an issue that urgently needs to be solved in doing a good job in farmland protection.
"Those born in the 1970s are unwilling to farm, those born in the 1980s do not know how to farm, and those born in the 1990s do not mention farming." Cadres of agricultural bureaus in some areas of Jiangxi said that with economic development and comparisons of relative returns, land's appeal to farmers has begun to decline. Abandoned rural farmland is also an important reason for the weakening awareness of farmland protection among grassroots cadres and the public. National relevant departments need to adopt more effective measures and make more investments in promoting the integrated development of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in rural areas and increasing farmland returns.