Land transfers thrive in rural China

Land transfers are flourishing in Jinzhou, some 260 km south of Beijing, catalyzing mushroom growth of specialized cooperatives, authorities have said.

"About one-tenth of farmers have joined market-oriented cooperatives in Jinzhou and more are enlisting as members," said Zhang Jian, deputy head of Jinzhou Supply and Marketing Cooperative.

China began in 2008 to allow farmers to rent out, transfer and merge the land they have contracted, amid a reform to bolster modern farming and reuse abandoned land.

"Most of China's farmland is owned collectively by the people who work on it. Farmers, by leasing farmland or pooling of land or machineries as shares to the cooperatives to form big farms, can increase income and lower farming cost," said Liu Hong, supervisory board chairman of Jinzhou Denong Corn Plantation Specialized Cooperative, the biggest of its kind.

Longquangu village official Zheng Zhitian in Jinzhou said he earned 300 yuan (47 U.S. dollars) per mu (one-fifteenth of a hectare) each year by farming after the cooperative membership. Members of cooperatives planting commercial crops or farmers who work part time for cooperatives usually earn more.

Jinzhou is not unique in China. Amid the country's urbanization drive, over 160 million farmers, about 30 percent of all rural laborers, have gone to work in cities as migrant workers. They prompted a land transfer binge by leasing their farmlands to the cooperatives.

As of June 2014, more than 250,000 square km of arable land had been transferred, almost 30 percent of the national total, according to Chen Xiwen, deputy head of the central agricultural work leading team.

China will stabilize rural land policies and push forward orderly circulation of land use right in accordance with law, according to a proposal released last month by the Communist Party of China Central Committee on formulating the nation's 13th Five-year Plan (2016-2020).

"Land transfer helps narrow urban-rural gap and facilitate the goal of doubling GDP and per capita income of both urban and rural residents by 2020 from the level of 2010," said Zhang Shuyu, a researcher with the University of International Business and Economics.

However, the government should guard against forced transfers and farmland being used for non-farming purposes under the guise of "land transfers", the researcher warned. Endi