China's farmland remains above "red line"

China's total area of arable land stood at 135 million hectares at the end of 2015, well above a government "red line".

The Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) has said that China must retain at least 124 million hectares of farmland by 2020, given farmers account for about half of the population and food security is still a major issue.

"The loss of farmland had slowed down noticeably in 2015 and the farmland acreage remained basically stable", said the MLR.

In 2015, around 300,000 hectares of arable land was lost to construction, disasters, environmental protection measures and agricultural restructuring, while 250,000 hectares of new farmland was created, MLR data showed in April. Endi