High-standard Farmland: Seen, Farmed and Improved Over the Years | Reader Comments
A Word from Foodthink
I. Why is high-standard farmland being abandoned?
Terraces might produce some grain in the South where there is plenty of natural rainfall. In the North, in Northern Shaanxi and Gansu, you are entirely at the mercy of the weather. They can be used as fields, but you wouldn’t dare designate them as basic farmland. Which official in charge of the project would dare guarantee that northern terraces can provide a stable food supply? (IP: Ningxia)
Come look at Yunnan. The mountains are so steep that the high-standard farmland created here is completely useless, and there is no water. (IP: Yunnan)
It’s purely a money-making exercise. The high-standard farmland in xxxx Town has no water and is largely desolate. (IP: Chongqing)
Was there any serious consideration for the differences between regions? We are in a plain, yet when irrigation is needed, people are fighting over water that simply isn’t there. (IP: Jiangsu) The field boundaries of our high-standard farmland are four or five metres wide; from a distance, they look like airport runways. Is it really necessary for them to be that wide? (IP: Hunan) My hometown is in xx, Sichuan. I don’t know who implemented the high-standard project, but to curry favour with superiors and boost political performance, they cut down mature fruit trees to plant worthless crops. After we had finally developed a fruit and vegetable industry chain, they changed it to grain, and as a result, every plot has been abandoned. (IP: Guangdong)
II. What kind of “high standard” do farmers actually need?
Second is the “trenching method” (抽槽法), which is faster and allows for simultaneous operations, but can lead to uneven soil fertility when the trenches are filled.
Finally, there is the “full-excavation method” (全铲法), which is suited for mechanical operations and is highly efficient. However, it exposes a large amount of raw subsoil, making the recovery of soil fertility difficult.
In 2022, the state released the “General Principles for the Construction of High-Standard Farmland (GB/T30600-2022)”, providing detailed regulations on plot remediation, effective soil layer thickness, and cultivated land productivity. However, neither the General Principles nor local standard documents specify which construction method should be used during land levelling.
In the comments, several contributors offered their own views on how to build farmland facilities that ensure food security and align with local natural and social conditions.
Ideal high-standard farmland should be a rational, localised configuration of infrastructure such as soil, channels, and roads. The core lies in following the “lay of the land”; it is the result of rural communities continuously adapting the farmland environment based on local knowledge gained through long-term farming practice. In reality, many renovation problems—aside from issues like cutting corners—stem from a lack of integration with the terrain. Land is “formatted” without any understanding of the topography, soil quality, or the lives of the residents.
High-standard farmland isn’t about being as large or as neat as possible; it’s about ensuring that on this specific plot of land, water can be supplied, retained, and drained conveniently, and soil fertility can be maintained. If a plot is too large, there will always be uneven areas; the high spots parch and the hollows flood, requiring the construction of internal ridges. If channels are built in rigid straight lines, they may not match the actual terrain; during heavy irrigation, the hollows overflow while the high spots get little water. Even if the ground is forcibly levelled, what is exposed may be dead soil or even crushed stone. These are all situations I have encountered in my research.
It takes three thousand years to form three inches of soil. If you ignore the terrain and the laws of planting, no matter how “high-standard” the farmland is, it will only erode the soil’s productivity. (IP: Shandong)
We have similar problems in xx City, Hunan: through renovation, good land became bad land, and bad land became barren land. This year’s rice harvest might be less than half of last year’s. I hope that in places where the land hasn’t been changed yet, they must not flip the fertile topsoil underneath and cover it with raw subsoil from below. Otherwise, the land won’t recover for five years. Renovating the land becomes damaging the land; the state invests, but looking at these large fields only brings anxiety as the plans fall through. (IP: Hunan)
I’ve found that the people implementing these high-standard farmland projects don’t understand agriculture. They blindly believe that as long as the land is levelled, it’s high-standard. But the land after levelling is just raw subsoil; crops cannot thrive there. You have to invest massive amounts of organic and chemical fertilisers to nourish the land, and for four or five years, there is only investment with no return. If farmers plant it themselves, the cost is too high; if they lease it out, the tenant won’t keep investing if there’s no harvest for a couple of years, and eventually, it’s just left fallow. Can they consider the actual situation? Farmland previously built to follow the mountains and water was called a “waste of land”, so they spent huge effort levelling the hilltops, and in the end, they gained nothing. (IP: Yunnan)
The best agricultural policy is to stop meddling. (IP: Beijing)
III. The contractors’ perspective
Once the central special funds are released, many construction firms from the housing and transport sectors jump into high-standard farmland construction. These firms are often run by ‘local tyrants’ and rogue project managers; it’s a miracle if they don’t bring in the township police to gang up on villagers who refuse to hand over land, let alone actively seek the villagers’ opinions during construction.
When small county-level firms are hired, villagers will demand that while the firm holds the contract in name, the actual work must be done by locals. Both the design and construction firms resist this, because the locals won’t follow the blueprints. If the plan specifies a ten-step staircase, they’ll stubbornly build five. They might think it’s enough, but it won’t pass the expert’s on-site inspection, forcing the designers, contractors, and supervisors to cooperate in fabricating ‘change documents’. The problem is that changing ten steps to five is a breach of regulations. These change documents are essentially time bombs—not just for themselves, but for the reviewing experts. If it all blows up, nobody in this circle will be able to work again.
The most critical point is that whether it’s design, construction, or supervision, the people actually responsible for the work (especially the designers), from junior technicians to project managers, see very little profit. Not a single person has been paid what they are worth; why would they bother with so many tedious details? Moreover, in farmland water conservancy projects, designers are mostly from land management backgrounds and contractors from civil engineering. In many small design institutes, you can’t find a single water-specialist in the whole office. Knowledge of irrigation relies entirely on what they picked up growing up in the countryside; any reasonable design is based purely on experience. The problem is, three to five years of experience isn’t worth a damn, and those with more experience don’t have the energy to be stationed on-site and work overtime every day. It’s a dead end. (IP: Hubei)
（Reply to above）Exactly, not one of the people actually doing the work was paid enough. (IP: Shaanxi)
I once dealt with a pumping station project. There was no water source, just a dry pit. The designer said they were waiting for rain to collect water, but I asked: if it rains enough to collect water, who is the pumping station even for? I asked the local farmers, and they just shook their heads. (IP: Henan)
For high-standard farmland, shouldn’t the focus be on farm roads, tube wells, and ditches? But now, they insist on setting quotas—for example, roads can only take up 20%, and you have to plant trees… then the trees end up encroaching on the roads, so people pull the trees up to plant vegetables. (IP: Henan)
(Reply to above) That’s because if quotas weren’t set, they’d spend everything on roads. In the first draft of the design schemes I’ve seen in the villages, roads always account for around 50%, which leads to endless tug-of-wars. But that’s not even the main point. The real issue is that design fees are already low, and then local governments use some local finance document to slash them even further. (IP: Hubei)
(Reply to the one above) Anyone who can talk about quotas really knows how this game is played. (IP: Henan)
The roads on the surface look great, but the invisible drainage is a complete shambles. And this isn’t just an isolated case. (IP: Heilongjiang)
It’s not that someone is lowering the standards; it’s that the standards were engineering standards from the start. They are using engineering standards to build farmland that needs to function sustainably over the long term. The result was predetermined from the beginning. (IP: Hunan)
IV. Investment Turned into Performance: How to Correct the Course
If we’re talking about the inherent problems with high-standard farmland construction, there are far too many. The complaints from people out in the fields are just the surface; if the internal issues aren’t solved, the surface symptoms won’t go away.
1. Local governments overemphasise it (basically, they are obsessed with the funding because it’s mostly transfer payments, government bond funds, and central-provincial funds—it’s all cold, hard cash! Why do they care? For misappropriation! How? By setting up agricultural investment companies! The investment company acts as the client, then finds a state-owned enterprise (SOE) to do the construction, and then the money can be used however they like.)
2. The implementing agencies are “too professional” (Agricultural investment companies are essentially about investment; investment is where their expertise lies. How could they possibly understand cultivation? Even if they wanted to learn, could they master it in less than ten years?)
3. The design is “too scientific” (How can you guarantee that a group of lads and lasses in their twenties and thirties understand farming? Since they don’t, how do they design? They design according to regulations, guidelines, and official documents. Some say the designers never even visited the sites and just drew everything on maps at the office. I want to clarify that they definitely visited, but since they don’t understand how to farm, they simply design based on their own ideas and plans, combined with the regulations. As for the farmers’ needs, they have no clue, so it inevitably feels irrational when the actual planting begins.)
4. The construction units are “too professional” (Whether a private firm or an SOE wins the bid, they are extremely professional. Anyone who says they aren’t is the amateur here. But their “professionalism” isn’t in farmland construction or cultivation needs; they are professionals in cost accounting and project planning. Most SOEs and private firms simply calculate the profit, fix a commission rate, and then subcontract the work. They never actually handle the operations themselves!)
5. On-site construction is “too professional” (The only standard for those actually doing the work or advancing the funds on-site is having money and the ability to front it. Why? Because the government misappropriated the funds at the start! Their construction isn’t professional, but their calculations are—their cost control is spot on, and the materials are always the cheapest possible.) (IP: Sichuan)
As a strategic investment, high-standard farmland construction is the largest investment in the field of rural revitalisation during the 14th Five-Year Plan—the central government invested over 700 billion yuan, and with local government funding, financial investment, and social capital, the total scale certainly exceeds 1 trillion yuan. The total investment for rural revitalisation during the 14th Five-Year Plan is 10.8 trillion yuan. Yet in reality, the results have been very poor, and it has cost them the trust of the people.
Over the past five years, I’ve written many complaints and posted numerous videos. Some even believe, quite extremely, that high-standard farmland has reduced grain yields and that the annual data on production increases are fake. But more troubling is that the underlying mechanism and logic currently in operation are systemic. Everything looks like it has standards, procedures, and supervision, but it’s all external. Everyone is “acting” to satisfy these “correct” and “modern” requirements. The current inspections by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs are actually just part of this cycle.
It’s like this with high-standard farmland, and in other areas of rural revitalisation—especially industrial revitalisation—the situation may be even worse. I suspect it’s similar in high-tech fields like chips and AI. The combination of high-flying political slogans, a web of procedures and administration, and the unsightly tacit consent of society has created this unique “performative” China. This “performance” is, of course, distorted, unnatural, and high-cost, yet it has become a necessity.
Can deep reform solve these problems? It’s very difficult, because it would require disturbing vested interests and existing rules. (IP: Zhejiang)
The state has spent a fortune on high-standard farmland. Department staff are working themselves to death while their responsibilities are blown out of proportion; it’s reached a point where no one wants to do it, and the people are dissatisfied. Since everyone is unhappy and it’s so difficult, I suggest we stop. Don’t call it “high-standard”; just call it small-scale farmland water conservancy facilities. Just try to solve the water and road issues. Soil fertility improvement should be handled separately. (IP: Sichuan)
V. Outside Large-scale Farmers vs. Family Farms
If it isn’t the locals planting crops on a large scale, but instead outsiders or large corporations, they aren’t looking to increase their income through yields; they’re here to game the large-scale state subsidies. Not a single one of them is actually interested in farming. (IP: Shandong)
For these outside large-scale planters, they don’t understand agriculture and are bound to lose money! The renovation of high-standard farmland is incredibly complex; it must be tailored to the local land and be flexible and practical, otherwise it will be counterproductive! (IP: Chongqing)
We have that here too. A large-scale land lessee planted loads of sorghum and soybeans, but they weren’t even harvested in autumn—just left there to wither. A few brave farmers harvested a bit for themselves. (IP: Shandong)
It’s the high-standard subsidies they’re after. (IP: Guangdong)
Around here, rice is being grown on the hills. Leased by outsiders. The yield is 100 jin per mu. They’re all just living off state subsidies. (IP: Zhejiang)
Good fields coming from hilltops? This lot must be after the subsidies, right? I heard from local farmers that there’s a project to convert dry land to paddy fields, and the subsidy is tens of thousands of yuan per mu. (IP: Guangxi)
They’re gaming the subsidies. The renovation fee is tens of thousands of yuan per mu, but the actual cost is only a few thousand—no more than five thousand. (IP: Guangdong)
They’re making their money from the subsidies. (IP: Guangxi)
They’ve come solely for the subsidies. (IP: Chongqing)
In this situation, the key to ensuring bountiful harvests may lie in finding ways for operational entities capable of organising and coordinating large-scale production to collaborate more effectively with smallholders, ensuring that the latter retain a voice in the production process.
My feeling is that there is a misalignment between public services and market services. Vast amounts of public funding are poured into engineering infrastructure, yet those doing the design don’t understand agriculture, leading to waste. Meanwhile, modern machinery such as tractors, harvesters, and drones are allocated through entirely market-driven methods, and these providers tend to favour large-scale farms. During the busy season, smallholders find it very difficult to secure machinery services, and when they do, the price is much higher than for the big players. Many pieces of large-scale machinery are indeed government-purchased, but in practice, they are contracted out to private companies, meaning smallholders struggle to access the corresponding services. At least locally, part of the reason farmers are reluctant to farm is the inconvenience of machinery services. I hope this can be improved! (IP: Zhejiang)
Policy is already adjusting; for example, there is encouragement for “moderate scale operation” on a scale of a hundred mu. During previous visits, Foodthink also learned that some cities and prefectures in Sichuan are collecting case studies of families whose income from farming at home is roughly equal to what they would earn working away from home—family farms being a primary form of moderate scale operation. In agricultural planting, bigger is indeed not always better.