The balance of cultivated land occupied and supplemented must not be upset; hold the red line for cultivated land protection

A field of withered, yellowing thatch, half a person's height; large tracts of land abandoned and left barren, with farmland water conservancy facilities built at an investment of several hundred thousand yuan left as discarded ornaments; some good fields damaged, littered with stone debris, impossible for villagers to cultivate... This is the current state of land development and consolidation that reporters saw last year while interviewing in a mountainous county in southern Shaanxi. On February 22 this year, this newspaper also reported a land reclamation project in a certain place carried out in a reservoir inundation area. Whether it is the development and improvement of wasteland and grassland, or land reclamation or land development and consolidation, all are main channels for supplementing cultivated land and all belong to one method of balancing cultivated land occupation and supplementation. But it is worth noting that at present many places commonly have phenomena such as occupying superior land and supplementing with inferior land, or occupying paddy fields and supplementing with dry land.

The emergence of this phenomenon stems from the fact that, against the background of vigorously advancing urbanization in recent years, local governments at all levels all face the pressure of new city expansion and old city renovation and upgrading, and demand for the development of newly added construction land and existing construction land has grown. As all localities continue to continuously supplement cultivated land, reserve resources for cultivated land, especially high-quality reserve resources, are becoming increasingly scarce, and the difficulty of supplementing the quantity of cultivated land is increasing. In particular, directly reclaiming land to supplement cultivated land and paddy fields of equivalent quality is difficult for many places to achieve. Therefore, in order to complete the task of "occupy one and supplement one," many places have no choice but to find ways to develop barren grass slopes, and some even have bizarre scenes such as destroying forests for reclamation to make up the numbers and "sow widely but harvest little," creating the inferior "unbalanced" situation of the balance of cultivated land occupation and supplementation.

It is precisely against this background that the Ministry of Land and Resources recently issued the Guiding Opinions on Implementing the Balance of Occupation and Supplementation by Combining Supplementing the Quantity of Cultivated Land with Improving the Quality of Cultivated Land. The Guiding Opinions propose that combining supplementation and improvement, and upgrading quality, must adhere to the principles of government leadership, adapting measures to local conditions, safeguarding farmers' rights and interests, and prudently and steadily advancing. In this sense, the Guiding Opinions are a reform measure that was "forced out."

At present, the drawbacks of "imbalance" exposed in the implementation of the balance of cultivated land occupation and supplementation are: on the one hand, in order to single-mindedly complete the task of balancing occupation and supplementation, the competent department of land and resources ignores the social, economic and ecological benefits that investment should produce. The fact that in some places large amounts of land after development and consolidation lie idle and barren inevitably puts it in an awkward position. Second, project review lacks rigor and scientificity, and ignores on-site reconnaissance, resulting in imprecise planning and design. On the other hand, due to lax supervision, construction parties single-mindedly pursue maximization of profits while ignoring project quality, and all kinds of problems arise.

The state's implementation of the system of compensation for occupied cultivated land is an important measure for holding the red line of 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land. Therefore, we must absolutely not become "unbalanced" in occupation and supplementation or engage in fraudulent "number games." If the expected benefits that the project itself should produce are ignored, the balance of cultivated land occupation and supplementation will degenerate into a formality and a mere going through the motions, and the impact on the national strategy of land security may be immeasurable.

From the perspective of reform, there is an urgent need to shift large amounts of scattered special funds invested in development and consolidation projects on remote and uncultivated barren grassland and barren grass slopes toward investment in improving the quality of existing cultivated land of a certain construction scale, so as to achieve the balance of cultivated land occupation and supplementation by combining supplementing the quantity of cultivated land with improving the quality of cultivated land. To make the reform measures proposed in the Guiding Opinions truly take effect, first, all localities should promptly study and formulate corresponding supporting implementation measures, and reform the internal model in which occupation and supplementation tasks are issued in advance from top to bottom. The key is still to plan scientifically, exercise strict control, improve rules and regulations, and perfect supervisory measures; at the same time, strictly guard the gates of project review and acceptance, explore diversified ways to realize the responsibility for supplementing occupied cultivated land, and advance national cross-regional coordination for supplementing cultivated land.