Illustration: Lu Ting/GT

China's Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) announced Friday that it will add nine provinces and regions - including Hunan, Hubei, Henan, Jiangsu, Gansu and Jilin - to a pilot program that allows farmers to formally register their rights to manage their land with relevant authorities. While the land itself will remain the property of the State, by obtaining such records farmers will be in a much better legal position to assert control over their land.

The central government has been gradually promoting land registration for a number of years. The Property Law issued in 2007 clearly affirmed the rights of farmers to manage their land on a contracted basis. Later, in 2009, the MOA started a pilot program aimed at recording contracted management rights. MOA also said in February this year that the registration system will be promoted to the whole country within five years' time. As of now, this job has already been accomplished in two-thirds of China's counties.

The job of defining who has the right to manage which parcel of land is a very important project, one that involves the interests of millions of rural families. During the 1980s, when farmers first tried to work their land under the contracted-management system, China still lacked the tools needed to undertake such a large-scale project effectively.

While the current registration push is intended to solve such linger problems, perhaps more importantly it is also a prerequisite along the way toward a less restricted land transfer market. This is to say that once farmers establish formal rights to their land, they can transfer these rights to other individuals or organizations in exchange for financial compensation.

Areas of Hainan and Anhui provinces have already served as testing grounds for policies related to less fettered land distribution.

For the most part, farmers and other members of the public have welcomed recent developments, since they allow rural residents to untie themselves from their land while also adding to the supply of urban labor. However, as has long been argued, allowing farmers to sell their land rights in an open market will invariably stir up a whole host of dangers and risks.

For starters, some farmers fear that they won't be able to recover their land-use rights after leasing them out for a period of time. Others worry that changes made on their land by contracting parties will erode its value. For generations, land in China has been regarded as both a source of income as well as social security in rural areas. No matter what happens, farmers have long known that they can always fall back on their home plots. This is important since other forms of institutional welfare are still lacking in the countryside.

Second, there are concerns that large portions of arable land could be deployed for non-agricultural purposes by developers or factory bosses. Such contractors may reduce agricultural productivity or damage the local environment. This, obviously, is inconsistent with the interests of the country or farmers.

Other potential issues, such as nonstandard transfers, low efficiency and scarcity of information about supply and demand may also weaken the benefits that could come from open trading of land management rights.

These and other concerns will have to be addressed over the long term as the Chinese government eases long-standing constraints on the land market. For the time being though, the registration and certification of land-use rights will help farmers safeguard their interests.

As authorities proceed, they must acknowledge the pitfalls confronting local farmers. A perfect rural social security mechanism would both support farmers who are willing to transfer their land while also laying their fears and anxieties to rest. Strengthened government supervision over land use by commercial groups is also needed to prevent profit-seeking enterprises from harming farmers, local land and the agricultural industry as a whole.

The author is a reporter with the Global Times. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn