China to invest $95 b in farms by 2015

Monday, 30 April 2012 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

BEIJING (Reuters): China will invest around 600 billion yuan ($95.1 billion) to improve the efficiency of its farms and boost grain output by 25 million tones by 2015, Xinhua said last week.

The extra spending will help China create around 26.7 million hectares of “efficient farmland” by 2015, Xinhua said, citing Dong Zuoji, a planning director at the Ministry of Land and Resources.

For food security, China will keep at least 120.2 million hectares of land for grain production, Xinhua said, but noted that would be challenging as China’s total farmland acreage had fallen 6 per cent from 1998 to 121.9 million hectares in 2010.

As the world’s most populous country and biggest consumer of grain, China is under pressure to produce more food to feed its people, leading experts to call on Beijing to expand farming overseas to overcome land constraints and low productivity.

Rising food demand in the world’s second-biggest economy has also spurred a growing number of companies to set out plans to build or expand pig and chicken farms in China.