BEIJING, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese lawmakers on Tuesday began reviewing a draft law on farmland protection and quality improvement.

A harvester harvests corn at a farmland in Yongxing Township, Huaying City, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Aug. 6, 2023. (File photo: Xinhua)

The draft was submitted for its third reading to the ongoing session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature.

Compared with the second-reading draft, the latest version adds provisions on talent, funding and compensation in response to public feedback.

Specifically, the draft calls on higher education institutions and research institutes to strengthen talent cultivation in farmland protection and quality improvement, while prohibiting any organization or individual from embezzling, occupying or diverting funds allocated for high-standard farmland development.

It also stresses the need to improve compensation mechanisms for key grain-producing areas, optimize fiscal transfer payments for major grain-producing regions, and establish a sound interprovincial compensation mechanism between grain-producing and grain-consuming areas.

To further strengthen black soil protection, the draft underscores efforts to preserve the soil's strong productive capacity, aiming to ensure that its total area does not decrease, its functions do not degrade, its quality improves, and its productivity remains sustainable.

For flood-control purposes, land within river and lake management zones should, in principle, not be used as a source of supplementary farmland, the draft says. It also introduces provisions for the comprehensive restoration of sandy, wind-eroded and water-eroded farmland to prevent and control soil erosion.

Farmland protection has remained high on China's agenda due to its importance to food security, as the country steps up efforts to keep its total farmland area above the red line of 1.8 billion mu (about 120 million hectares).

Developing a farmland protection mechanism that integrates quantity, quality and ecology is a key task set out in the outline of China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), as part of efforts to safeguard the supply of grain and other key agricultural products.