According to the Ministry of Agriculture on Monday, April 22, China urged local authorities to invest more in cleaning up contaminated agricultural land.

According to a government poll, soil pollution has become one of the most serious environmental problems in China: almost a fifth of the country's agricultural land is subject to varying degrees of pollution with pesticides, chemical waste, or toxic heavy metals, including and cadmium.

An action plan has been developed in China to address this problem, and a new law entered into force earlier this year. However, the government of the country faced a serious task - how to pay for a nationwide soil treatment program, which can cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Ministry of Agriculture reported that although some regions put soil pollution under “initial control”, many regions did not take the problem seriously or did not allocate enough resources to solve it.

China is desperately trying to bring back more of its rare agricultural land, seeking to maximize agricultural production, especially in a situation where the country continues to urbanize.

According to the government, by the end of 2020, about 90 percent of contaminated agricultural land should be cleared and become safe for crops.