China to spend massively on farmland improvement

A farmer carrying reaped rice walks on a flooded riverbank in Luxin Township/XINHUA

BEIJING, Sep 7 – The government will spend 37.36 billion yuan (about $5.93 billion) to improve the quality of farmland this year, the Ministry of Finance said on Thursday.

The fund, which is a part of the country’s comprehensive agricultural development plan, includes 21.92 billion yuan from the central budget and 12.05 billion yuan from local budgets, the ministry said.

The government plans to improve the quality of 15.47 million mu (1.03 million hectares) of medium- and low-yield land and build 13.31 million mu of high-quality farmland by the end of 2012, said the ministry.

The government will also support improvements for 45 water-saving projects in medium-sized irrigation districts, said the ministry.

The projects will add or improve irrigation on 25.82 million mu of land, aiming to increase agricultural production capacity, it said.

XINHUA

Xinhua News Agency, founded on November 7, 1931, is China’s national news agency as well as a global news and information network. Xinhua has set up a global news and information gathering network, with headquarters in Beijing, 33 domestic bureaus in provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities plus the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao, as well as 140 bureaus in the rest of the world. Xinhua is yet to set up a bureau in Taiwan, where it has posted resident correspondents. Xinhua provides its worldwide subscribers with news and financial information products in the forms of text, photo, graphics, audio, video, and mobile phone text messages 24 hours a day in eight languages: Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese and Japanese.