Heavily polluted land should be designated as permanent basic farmland

Beijing, 14 Oct (Xinhua) the Ministry of Land and Resources revealed that it has responded to the "proposal to speed up the adjustment of the land use nature of heavily polluted cultivated land" put forward by deputies to the National people's Congress. In the reply, the Ministry of Land and Resources proposed that arable land that had suffered serious pollution and could not be harnessed should be designated as permanent basic farmland.

In recent years, it is an indisputable fact that cultivated land in China has been polluted. On April 17 last year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Land and Resources issued a bulletin on the national investigation of soil pollution for the first time. The communique said that the overall situation of the soil environment in the country is not optimistic, and the soil pollution in some areas is serious. In particular, the communique pointed out that the soil environmental quality of cultivated land is worrying.

According to the communique, the overall over-standard rate of soil in the country is 16.1%, of which 1.1% is heavily polluted, and 10.4% of cultivated land is over-standard. From the point of view of excessive pollutants, the over-standard rates of cadmium, mercury, arsenic, copper, lead, chromium, zinc and nickel were 7.0%, 1.6%, 2.7%, 2.1%, 1.5%, 1.1%, 0.9% and 4.8%, respectively. The over-standard rates of BHC, DDT and PAHs were 0.5%, 1.9% and 1.4%, respectively.

Both the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Land and Resources believe that due to the extensive mode of economic development, unreasonable industrial structure and layout, high total discharge of pollutants and serious soil pollution in some areas, it poses a serious threat to the quality and safety of agricultural products and human health.

Therefore, the seriously polluted and irreparable cultivated land will affect human health if it is recultivated.

At present, China is carrying out the delimitation of permanent basic farmland, that is, on the basis of the existing work of delineating permanent basic farmland, priority will be given to the existing high-quality arable land around cities and towns and along transportation lines as permanent basic farmland, in order to maximize the comprehensive production capacity of grain and ensure the basic stability of the actual arable land and national food security. According to the requirements of the Ministry of Land and Resources and the Ministry of Agriculture, the delineation and improvement of permanent basic farmland across the country will be completed in an all-round way by the end of this year.

According to the Ministry of Land and Resources, in the process of delineating permanent basic farmland, through verification, it is found that some places are far from being delimited, and the phenomenon of poor delineation is beginning to emerge.

Will the contaminated land be mixed with permanent basic farmland? With regard to the proposal put forward by deputies to the National people's Congress to speed up the adjustment of the land use nature of heavily polluted cultivated land, the Ministry of Land and Resources requires that on the basis of the existing demarcation of basic farmland, high-quality cultivated land should be given priority to permanent basic farmland and cultivated land that does not meet the delineation requirements should be designated. At the same time, with the approval of the people's government at the provincial level, the agricultural department at or above the county level and the competent department of environmental protection at the same level shall set aside permanent basic farmland for monitoring and evaluating the cultivated land that has been seriously polluted and cannot be harnessed.