China will implement differentiated management for agricultural facility land.

The reporter learned from the Ministry of Natural Resources today that in order to further promote increased production and income for farmers and support agricultural modernization and rural revitalization, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the National Forestry and Grassland Administration recently jointly issued a notice requiring differentiated management of land used for facility agriculture through a positive list approach. Facility agriculture, simply put, is agriculture that uses greenhouses, plastic tunnels, farms, and other facilities for planting and breeding, with diverse forms of land use that may include cultivated land, garden land, and even construction land. The newly issued Notice divides land used for facility agriculture into three categories. It explicitly requires that facility agriculture that has not damaged the cultivated soil layer, such as small-scale farmland water conservancy and integrated water-fertilizer facilities, shall still be managed according to the original land use, without the need to go through new land use procedures; production facilities and ancillary facilities for planting and breeding that damage the cultivated soil layer and directly serve agricultural production shall be managed as facility agricultural land and require filing; and facilities not included in the "positive list for land used for facility agriculture" shall be managed as construction land. In terms of site selection, future efforts will encourage the use of unused land such as gobi, desert, and saline-alkali land, as well as existing construction land and idle land, for facility agricultural land, and permit occupation of cultivated land other than permanent basic farmland. At the same time, there will be no limit on the scale of production facilities, land use ratios and upper scale limits will be imposed on different types of ancillary facilities, and facility agricultural land will be encouraged to be used more directly for agricultural production.