There is not enough cultivated land in China to improve the competitiveness of China's agriculture.

The more arable land, the better the conditions for improving the competitiveness of China's agriculture, and the easier it is for farmers to specialize. The most effective way to protect cultivated land is not to rely on administrative orders, but to let the market mechanism play a more regulatory role.

Recently, national leaders have highlighted the importance of protecting cultivated land, which has attracted the attention of public opinion. In fact, the protection of cultivated land has always been regarded as a basic national policy in China, which is supported by a package of specific policies. However, the protection of cultivated land in China has not formed a high degree of consensus from all walks of life. In the practice of land management, this policy has encountered a variety of dispelling factors, so that senior people do not dare to take it lightly.

In our country, the reason for protecting cultivated land is indeed very good.

Judging from the nature of the agricultural economy, there is never too much cultivated land. There seems to be a lot of cultivated land in our country. Because we used to collect agricultural tax from farmers according to the area of their land, the farmers concealed some land. In some places, the amount of cultivated land concealed accounts for 30% of the total cultivated land area. Therefore, the actual area of cultivated land in the country far exceeds 1.8 billion mu. If we sow 1.8 billion mu of grain on 1.3 billion mu of land (some places can sow more than two seasons a year), according to the actual situation of the main grain producing areas in our country, the average output of grain per mu will be 500kg, and the total amount of grain produced will be very considerable. So that our country can not be used up during the peak population period. However, this method of accounting is wrong.

The main problem facing China's grain production is not whether the absolute quantity is enough, but how high the grain cost is and whether the grain price is competitive in the market. It is often uneconomical to pursue yield per mu too much. If there is enough arable land to produce the same amount of grain, we can use less chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and we can also reduce the cost of labor by expanding large-scale operation. Therefore, the more arable land, the better the conditions for improving the competitiveness of China's agriculture, and the easier it is for farmers to specialize.

Some people do not approve of the "red line for the protection of 1.8 billion mu of arable land" for fear that this policy will affect the process of urbanization in China, while some friends may attribute the rise in house prices to this policy. This doesn't make sense. Urbanization is of course very important; China's urbanization rate must gradually reach more than 80%, otherwise there is no hope for agricultural modernization. However, there is already a lot of urban land in our country, but the utilization efficiency is not high.

The most effective way to protect cultivated land is not to rely on administrative orders, but to let the market mechanism play a more regulatory role. The first is to establish farmers' land property rights. When agricultural land is converted into construction land, it should not be decided only by "indicators" and cadres, but by farmers in the end. The second is to strictly limit the scope of compulsory land expropriation. Only the land occupied by public facilities can be expropriated by the government. The relatively vague conditions of land expropriation such as "public interest" should be abandoned. Third, the land for industrial and commercial projects should follow the market, and the state will no longer expropriate land. When it is in line with the plan, the land owned by collectives can enter the market directly. Through the flexibility of land planning, the state can introduce competition into the land supply mechanism to prevent land prices from being too high.

Finally, a more effective cultivated land protection mechanism should be established. The main disadvantage of the current basic farmland protection system is that the delineation of basic farmland is relatively fine and interlaced with construction land, so it is easy to encroach on cultivated land. Consideration can be given to learning from the good experience of foreign countries and establishing a system of agricultural protected areas. The state may delimit agricultural protected areas in large areas, and stipulate that in agricultural protected areas, except for roads and other national infrastructure construction, all other non-agricultural land can only be reduced but not increased. This can greatly reduce the supervision cost of cultivated land protection, reduce land speculation that coveted cultivated land into construction land, encourage land consolidation and increase the area of effective cultivated land. Without these reforms, it will be very difficult to achieve the goal of effectively protecting cultivated land.