Cropland of high standard gaining ground

In the past five years, the area of high-standard cropland in China has risen by 30.4 million hectares, a State Council report stated earlier this year. The rate of mechanization for plowing, planting and harvesting crops rose from 67 percent to 73 percent.

A report by Farmers' Daily said the nation will provide 300,000 hectares of new high-quality cropland this year, and further optimize 227,000 hectares of such land during this time.

Government data show that Anhui leads provincial regions in the transformation of high-standard cropland.

The province, which has 5.53 million hectares of cultivated land, will complete the provision of 4.5 million hectares of high-standard cropland by 2030, the provincial government said. More than 4 million hectares of such land had been provided in Anhui by the end of last year.

The provincial government's finance department said in March that Anhui would invest 10 billion yuan ($1.39 billion) on establishing new high-standard cropland this year.

The department said the standard funding from different levels of government in the province would be 37,500 yuan per hectare this year, and it would be raised to 45,000 yuan per hectare by 2025.

Meanwhile, the central government will continue to invest in providing high-standard cropland.

For example, to supply an additional 8,330 hectares of such land in Ma'anshan city, Anhui, the central authorities will allocate about 135 million yuan, while the provincial and municipal authorities will together invest about 113 million yuan, a recent news release from the municipal government stated.