Land Resources

State

The farmland resources are unevenly distributed with one half in mountain areas. Furthermore, many arable areas suffer serious salinization, desertification and soil erosion. The desertification of lands has been continuously aggravated in the recent five decades. The affected areas by desertification reached 262.2 million hectares in 1996, accounting for 27.3 percent of total national territory. The area of salinized land was 44.01 million hectares, among which 5.78 million hectares of arable land were salinized.

According to statistics, in 1977, there were 116500 hectares of abandoned land, including 62800 hectares of farmland which accounted for 53.9% of total idle land. There were 4210 development zones in China, and they occupied 232200 hectares of land, including 128300 hectares of farmland.