Challenge and Choice for the Farmland Occupation-Compensation Balance in the Urbanization Process in China

Urbanization has been one of the most important characteristics of global development.The rapid development of urbanization in China leads to the great expansion of urban land use,resulting in considerable loss of fertile arable land.To protect the arable land resources and to control the encroachment of urban land into farmland,China government has implemented the policy of occupation-compensation balance for arable land since 1999.This policy requires that farmland transferred to non-agricultural use must be fully compensated by land reclamation or land consolidation.In this paper the roles of this policy in controlling the rapid loss of arable land and identified problems associated with the policy enforcement were discussed.Regarding the farmland protection,three suggestions were given:to put more emphasis on the preservation and improvement of farmland quality,e.g.,the strict control of farmland conversion to non-agricultural use,and the prevention and control of soil pollution;to develop/improve the land use policy;and to strengthen management of the specific fee for land reclamation/consolidation and establish evaluation indicators for the newly opened farmlands to compensate the occupation.In addition,we should improve the land monitoring system as to be able timely monitoring the farmland change,and thus to prevent illegal or excessive non-agricultural occupation of farmland.