Ensuring food security and speeding up the circulation of rural land will be at the top of the agenda of a high-level meeting on rural work, which is expected to open Monday, analysts said Sunday.

China's annual Central Rural Work Conference, which maps out policies for next year's development of agriculture and rural regions, is expected to open Monday, the Economic Observer reported Saturday.  

The "No.1 document," the first central committee document to be released in 2014, will be discussed at the meeting and published as early as January 2014, and ensuring food security will be listed as the key issue in the document, the report said.

The document will state the self-sufficiency objective in terms of percentage for wheat, rice and corn as well as define whether China's food self-sufficiency must be maintained at 100 percent, according to the report.

"Previously, the government only emphasized food production but now it will put more attention to raising food production capacity and improving the food quality and security," Li Guoxiang, a researcher with the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), told the Global Times on Sunday.

On December 13, China concluded the annual Central Economic Work Conference, which listed "ensuring national food security" among six major tasks for 2014.

China must implement a food strategy that mainly relies on domestic production, and grain imports should be kept at a moderate level, according to a statement released after the meeting.

"Due to the rising labor cost, the income from planting grain has declined in recent years, dampening farmers' enthusiasm for grain planting and making it a risk to the country's food security," said Ma Wenfeng, an analyst with Beijing Orient Agribusiness Consultant Co.

China's grain production hit 601.94 million tons in 2013, up 2.1 percent from a year earlier, official data showed November.

The country imported around 10 percent of the food it consumed in 2012 and the latest figures on grain import are not available yet.

The guideline on maintaining the national food security between 2008 and 2020 released in 2008 said that China's food self-sufficiency must be kept above 95 percent.

"At the Central Rural Work Conference, policymakers will also discuss measures to optimize allocation of land resources through market-based land reform and speed up reforms of rural land circulation," Li from CASS said.

"The key to speeding up the market-based land reform is to define the functions of different types of land and make sure only non-farm land can be circulated in the market and rural people's right and income can be safeguarded," Li said.

According to a reform roadmap made at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee held in November, China will allow rural collectively owned land, which can be used for construction, to be transferred or rented on the market, just like urban land.