OREANDA-NEWS. August 09, 2011. At a recently held national conference about comprehensive management engineering of soil erosion on sloping cultivated lands, it was learned that China will enhance the comprehensive management engineering of sloping cultivated land and will build 67,000 square kilometers of standardized large scale and high standard terrace.

In the north management area, the per capita basic farmland is expected to reach 1,334 square meters, and in the south management area, 667 square meters. In the project area, the grain yield will increase by 10 million ton. Soil erosion will be efficiently controlled, the sediment deposition of rivers and lakes will be relieved, and the cultivators’ income will increase. Furthermore, the survival and development issues of the 70 million residents of the hill area will be solved properly.

Chen Lei, Minister of Water Resources Ministry of China, said that China has 239,000 square kilometers of slope farmland, accounting for about one-fifth of total cultivated land. Sloping cultivated land is production land on hill areas, which the masses have relied upon for their survival and development. But it is also the major sources of soil erosion.

The area of sloping farmland accounts for 6.7 percent of China’s total soil erosion area, but in terms of quantity, these areas account for 28.3 percent. The serious soil erosion aggravates the poverty of the Hill Areas and becomes the outstanding bottleneck that restricts hill areas’ economic and social development.

Reportedly, in this year the slope farmland comprehensive management project will be expanded to 100 counties. It will encompass the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the Northwest Loess Plateau, the Black Soil Region of Northeast China, the Southwest Limestone Area as key areas and will choose with priority impoverished areas, minority areas, the old revolutionary base areas, reservoir areas with less cultivated land and reservoir resettlement areas.