To sustain its growing population, China has made an effort to guard food security by banning cities from usurping farmlands that provide produce.
Chinese authorities will specify certain farmable lands near urbanized cities as "permanent basic farmland" to protect the food supply chain of the country.
Farmlands located in the outskirts of towns and cities, including those which are situated near traffic routes, should only be utilized for farming and planting, said both the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Land and Resources.
The farmlands are believed to be heavily used for urbanization and land re-developments.
The policy will be implemented in 14 cities across China. Bejing, Guangzhou and Shanghai are going to start implementing the policy, while the other cities will be given until late 2016 to do enforce the farmland regulation.
This is China's first farmland preservation effort in the past 20 years. The new policy was made after China's urban population boomed in 2011 which transitioned the country from an agrarian to an industrialized one.
More and more villages were dismantled as a result of the urbanization, forcing farm workers to take industrial jobs. Consequently, the decrease in the number of farmers led to an increase in basic food goods imports.
The ministries said that there are larger farmable lands situated in the outskirts of medium- and large-sized cities that have not been specified as permanent farmlands, and that expanding cities taking over farmlands is an ongoing problem.
"During rapid urbanization, high-yield farmland has been gradually 'eaten' by steel and cement," said Jing Daming from the Ministry of Land and Resources.