Terraced fields after snow at Wangjinzhuang Village in Shexian County, north China's Hebei Province, on December 27, 2016 (XINHUA)

Arable land reserves in China's developed regions are nearly depleted and intensive land use is unsustainable, the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) said on December 28.

A survey by the MLR, beginning in 2014, showed total land reserves have retreated by nearly 2 million hectares since the last survey from 2000 to 2003.

Eleven developed provinces in the country's east have only 15.4 percent of the land bank, while the the bulk of reserves reside in less-developed central and west regions.

Inventories in Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu and Fujian lost over 90 percent as 28 provinces posted declines.

The survey also showed China has shed 74 percent of contiguous land reserves, and only 41.1 percent of the 5-million-hectare land reserve is usable in the near term.

The country has vowed to retain at least 124 million hectares of farmland in 2020 as it manoeuvres a balance between food security and economic development.

In 2015, around 300,000 hectares of arable land were lost to construction, disasters, environmental protection measures and agricultural restructuring, MLR data showed.

(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2016)