Lead
At the end of 2023, the Ministry of Natural Resources has repeatedly proposed to adjust and improve the balance system of cultivated land occupation and compensation. In accordance with the reform arrangement, the balance of occupation and compensation of cultivated land occupied by non-agricultural construction in the past has been extended to the balance of occupation and compensation for all types of occupied cultivated land, and the balance of occupation and compensation should be implemented, from "small occupation and compensation" to "large occupation and compensation". This will be a major change in the management of natural resources, and the "large-scale occupation and compensation" and "supplemental occupation" will change many, many things, and will also face many new challenges.
background
On July 20, 2023, when General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over the second meeting of the Central Financial and Economic Commission, he proposed for the first time to reform and improve the system of cultivated land occupation and compensation, and unify all types of cultivated land occupation into the management of the balance of occupation and compensation. On October 10, 2023, People's Daily published an article by Wang Guanghua, Minister of Natural Resources, entitled "Effectively Strengthen the Protection of Cultivated Land and Reform and Improve the System of Balance of Occupation and Compensation". This paper focuses on the key issues of guarding the red line of cultivated land protection and consolidating the foundation of food security, and provides guidance for the implementation of the requirements of the second meeting of the Central Financial and Economic Commission and the effective implementation of the reform and deployment of the system of balance between occupation and compensation.
The situation facing cultivated land protection
The article mentions that on the basis of continuing to strictly regulate the balance of occupation and compensation of cultivated land occupied by non-agricultural construction, in view of the unreasonable loss of a large amount of cultivated land reflected in the third national land survey, it is required to implement the "balance of entry and exit" of cultivated land converted into forest land, grassland, orchard land and other agricultural land, and make up for cultivated land of equal quantity and quality that can be used stably for a long time within the year The corresponding local reserves supplement the cultivated land index to ensure that the cultivated land will not be reduced. Through a series of measures (two balances and one freezing), the trend of continuous reduction in the total amount of cultivated land for many years has been initially curbed, and a net increase in the total amount of cultivated land in the country has been achieved for two consecutive years in 2021 and 2022.
At the same time, it also points out the main problems existing in the protection of cultivated land, including: (1) from the perspective of cultivated land occupation, various non-agricultural constructions such as urban and rural construction and infrastructure supporting facilities will inevitably still occupy a part of cultivated land, the scale of cultivated land loss caused by agricultural restructuring and afforestation and tree planting is still not small, and the problem of illegal land use is still prominent. (2) From the perspective of supplementary cultivated land, there are problems in the balance of occupation and compensation, such as taking more and making up for less, taking advantage of the superior and compensating for the inferior, and even cheating, and the implementation of the "balance between entry and exit" is not in place in some places, and the total amount of cultivated land in the region is still decreasing; in some places, illegal reclamation damages the ecological environment, and the quality of some supplementary cultivated land is not high, and there is a risk of abandonment and loss. (3) The reserve resources of cultivated land in China are becoming less and less, and most of them are located in areas with important ecological functions, so it is increasingly difficult to supplement cultivated land by reclaiming reserve resources.
What is "Two Balances"?
The Land Management Law, revised in 1998, established a land-use control system with the "balance of occupation and compensation" as the core, and its focus was to strictly control the conversion of agricultural land into construction land in view of the fact that the construction of a large amount of agricultural land had led to a sharp reduction in the area of cultivated land on the mainland and a serious threat to "ration fields". In the more than 20 years since this system has been in place, it has not only effectively curbed to a great extent the impulse to blindly occupy cultivated land or to arbitrarily occupy and abuse cultivated land for construction in order to seek more than it wants, but has also ensured that the total amount of cultivated land can be "replenished more than occupied," and has played an important and positive role in promoting the realization of a balance in the total amount of cultivated land on the mainland.
On November 27, 2021, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the National Forestry and Grassland Administration issued the Notice on Issues Concerning the Strict Control of Cultivated Land Use (Natural Resources Development [2021] No. 166), which put forward the concept of "balance in and out" of cultivated land for the first time.
The background of the introduction of the system of balance between entry and exit and balance of occupation and compensation is based on the basic national conditions of land in the mainland and the situation and status quo of cultivated land protection. From the "balance of occupation and compensation" to the "balance of entry and exit", in fact, from the different perspectives of controlling the occupation of construction and controlling the mutual transfer of farmland, the cultivated land protection network has been tightly weaved.
On December 29, 2023, the 7th Session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress passed the Food Security Law of the People's Republic of China. Article 11 of the "Law on Food Security and Security" stipulates that the State shall implement a compensation system for the occupation of cultivated land and strictly control all kinds of occupation of cultivated land; This is the latest legal system arrangement on the system of arable land occupation and compensation.
What are the new changes after the reform of the balance system?
First, "small occupation and compensation" has been changed to "large occupation and compensation", and the scope of cultivated land protection has been unified. In accordance with the reform and deployment, the compensation system for the occupation of cultivated land should be adjusted and improved, and the balance of occupation and compensation of cultivated land occupied by non-agricultural construction in the past should be extended to the balance of occupation and compensation of cultivated land for all types of occupied cultivated land, and the balance of occupation and compensation should be implemented from "small occupation and compensation" to "large occupation and compensation", and the scope of cultivated land protection should be unified.
Second, the sources of supplementary cultivated land have been effectively expanded. After the reform, the main sources of supplementary cultivated land are: unused land such as saline-alkali land, inefficient idle construction land, and other agricultural land such as orchard land, forest land, and grassland that flow out of cultivated land. In other words, supplementary cultivated land sources that used to be part of the balance of arable land in and out of cultivated land are included. At the same time, it should be noted that the slope requirement of the supplementary cultivated land site conditions for the balance of entry and exit is below 25 degrees, while the slope requirement for the site conditions of the previous occupation and compensation balance of the cultivated land shall not be greater than 15 degrees. The author believes that under the situation of increasingly strict cultivated land protection, the slope requirements of cultivated land for the balance of occupation and compensation will still be in accordance with the slope requirements of the previous balance of occupation and compensation.
Third, it is conducive to the overall protection of cultivated land. In the past, the difference between the "balance of occupation and compensation" of cultivated land and the "balance of entry and exit" is that it has a certain index transaction income, and some places blindly pursue the index income when implementing the "balance of occupation and compensation" of cultivated land, while ignoring the overall protection of cultivated land. For example, in the site selection stage of supplementary cultivated land, the data of "two adjustments" and "three adjustments" are combined, and the plots that meet the "balance of occupation and compensation" of cultivated land are selected for reclamation, while the plots that meet the "balance of entry and exit" of cultivated land are not reclaimed, which is not conducive to the centralized contiguous and overall protection of cultivated land. After the reform, with the implementation of the "large occupation and compensation", the sources of supplementary cultivated land will be broadened, which is conducive to the concentrated and contiguous protection of cultivated land.
In the face of the increasingly complex situation of cultivated land protection, the form of cultivated land use is constantly changing, and the boundaries between "agriculture" and "non-agriculture" and "grain" and "non-grain" will be more difficult to strictly define. In some localities, in the name of "agricultural development," "non-agricultural construction" has been carried out in order to circumvent the implementation of the balance between cultivated land occupation and compensation. The reform of the balance of occupation and compensation has changed from "small occupation and compensation" to "large occupation and compensation", and all kinds of occupation of cultivated land need to implement the balance of occupation and compensation, and adhere to the principle of supplementing and occupying, strictly controlling occupation, strictly supplementing, and strictly abiding by the total amount, which can effectively prevent the use of "entry and exit balance" to avoid the implementation of "occupation and compensation balance".
Source: Natural Resources Popularization Law
Editor: Ma Qiuju