China had 128.6 million hectares of arable land in 2023 according to the Ministry of Natural Resources' Communique on Natural Resources released last week. That was a 1-million-hectare increase from the previous year's value published in the China Statistical Yearbook.
In contrast, the area sown in crops dropped by about 1 million hectares to 169 million hectares in 2023, seemingly in conflict with the increase in cultivated land area reported by the Ministry of Land Resources. The area sown to crops had peaked at nearly 170 million hectares in 2022.
The area sown to crops in China exceeds the cultivated area because some land is planted intensively by planting 2 or 3 crops each year on the same field. (In contrast, the amount of harvested crop area in the United States is substantially less than the total area of cropland because a substantial amount of U.S. land is left fallow or put into conservation uses.) There is no explanation for why the rising trend in sown area bears little correspondence to the up-and-down jumps in the cultivated land statistics after various surveys.
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| Compiled from China Statistical Yearbooks, censuses and communiques. |
China's statisticians improbably keep finding more farmland despite having covered the country with vast housing developments, industrial parks, town squares, highways, railroad tracks--and in recent years scenic parks and lakes. Between 2008 and 2023 the area sown to crops in China somehow
increased by 12.7 million hectares. Over that time period, USDA data show that U.S. cropland area decreased by about 10 million hectares.
According to the UN's FAOSTAT database China has the third-largest area of cropland after India and the United States. China's crop area is slightly larger than Russia's and almost twice as large as Brazil's cropland area. Yet China is the world's largest importer of agricultural products. Brazil and the United States are largest suppliers of China's agricultural imports.
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| Source: FAOSTAT database. |
Chinese leaders worry that loss of farmland will threaten national food security, so strict rules for preventing decline in cropland and pledges to improve its quality are the first two elements of China's food security policy. Statisticians are surely expected to report success in maintaining or even expanding the farmland base. The Natural Resources Communique describes its statistics as "a great report card to society" on the utilization and protection of resources.
Elsewhere in the communique it was revealed that 85,700 hectares of cultivated land were requisitioned for construction projects during 2024, suggesting that farmland is still being gobbled up. The communique emphasized that the pace of farmland loss had slowed: the 85,700 hectares was 32-percent less than the year before. The communique's authors attributed the slower loss of farmland to strict land use planning, but it may actually have been due to the implosion of China's real estate sector.
Cultivated land accounts for about 17 percent of China's land uses, according to the Communique on Natural Resources. Orchards, tea and other permanent crops add another 2 percent. According to the communique, residential, industrial, and mining account for just 5 percent of land use and transportation infrastructure accounts for 1 percent. Forests account for 35% and grasslands and pasture account for 33%.
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| Based on data reported in China's 2024 Communique on Natural Resources. |
The sensitivity of farmland statistics is reflected by a paragraph in the communique highlighting policy directives to prevent farmland from being diverted to other uses, to improve the quality of the limited amount of cultivated land, and to improve the system for offsetting requisitions of farmland with additions of new farmland. An agriculture ministry circular calls for a "cultivated land balance" management system of adding new cropland before allowing any use of cropland for nonagricultural use or planting of forests, fruit trees or tea bushes.
The communique also highlighted China's new push to industrialize forests and oceans. The communique reported that China's GDP from maritime activities accounted for 7.8 percent of its gross domestic product in 2024. The output of the forestry industry was said to grow 9.6 percent. Not mentioned in the communique are recent initiatives to obtain edible oil from tree crops, plant nut and fruit trees in mountain villages, and expand marine aquaculture.
The communique and other recent documents also highlighted a Xi Jinping pet project to overhaul village-level land use, build infrastructure and beautify villages (launched while Xi governed Zhejiang Province 22 years ago) with the puzzling name of "1,000-10,000 project". The communique said over 670 billion yuan was spent on a pilot program that reconfigured the layout of villages, added 44,000 hectares of farmland and reduced land used for industry and commercial use by 10,700 hectares.
While the statistics suggest China has huge grassland resources, much of it is degraded. The communique lauds a 32-billion-yuan program to push back against desertification, highlighting a program to contain the expansion of the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang.
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