Looking at the 13 Year Rural Land Transformation Project in Shanghai from a Building Pig Farm | Land | Shanghai
Traditional pig farms not only cause heavy pollution, but also have high carbon emissions, making them an industry that many rural areas avoid. However, Langxia Town in Shanghai has vowed to break tradition. The pine forest pig farm project that has settled here is not just an ordinary path. Not only can pigs be raised upstairs, but organic fertilizer can also be used for farmland and vegetable fields. It can also reduce emissions while generating electricity through biogas.
Songlin Pig Farm
Such a versatile high-tech pig farm is a silhouette of Shanghai's exploration of rural land consolidation. In cities with limited spatial resources, 45 square kilometers of arable land and 35 square kilometers of forest land have been gradually transformed, and the scale of reclamation has exceeded 100 square kilometers, leaving sufficient space for the upgrading of rural industries. In the past 13 years, what has Shanghai done correctly and how has it been achieved?
Lay a solid foundation for rural revitalization
Shanghai's agricultural GDP accounts for less than 1%, but the proportion does not indicate its status. The relevant person in charge of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources introduced that rural areas in Shanghai are important carriers of urban core functions and strategic spaces for urban core competitiveness, playing a significant role and having unique value.
However, rural areas in Shanghai also face pain points such as imbalanced urban-rural development, prominent issues of insufficient rural development, and difficulty in meeting the high-quality pursuit of citizens with the quantity and quality of ecological space.
Improving the quality of cultivated land increment and laying a solid foundation for rural revitalization is the first step in land consolidation in Shanghai. Since 2010, Shanghai has launched various types of land consolidation projects, including city level land consolidation projects, reduction of suburban parks and inefficient construction land. 10 suburban parks are 46 square kilometers of ecological and wilderness open spaces focused on important ecological nodes in Shanghai, receiving over 28 million visitors. The popular camping activity on Changxing Island in Shanghai is located in the Changxing Island Country Park.
At the same time, Shanghai is also reducing and reclaiming inefficient construction land with small workshops, low production efficiency, and severe pollution. At present, the city has completed the demolition and reclamation of inefficient construction land outside the planned development boundary, with a total area of 101 square kilometers, including 45 square kilometers of newly added farmland and 35 square kilometers of newly added forest land. The land indicators allocated through reduction have also been used for new purposes, with 48% used for municipal livelihood projects, 29% used for six types of operational projects, and 23% used for industrial projects.
Langxia Country Park
The Jinshan Langxia Town, where the Songlin Building Pig Farm is located, is one of the earliest pilot projects. In 2013, the central area of Langxia Town launched the first phase of a municipal land consolidation project, which reorganized scattered agricultural land and formed a spatial pattern of concentrated and contiguous ecological forests, fertile fields, vegetable fields, and farmhouses covering an area of 10000 acres. In 2015, Langxia Countryside Park took the lead in opening in the city. In the same year, the western region launched the second phase of municipal level land improvement projects, while also carrying out landscape improvement, demonstration of integrated agriculture, forestry, and water construction, and reduction of construction land.
After nearly a decade of rectification, Langxia Town has reduced the amount of inefficient construction land by 50 hectares, added about 80 hectares of arable land, received an average of 700000 tourists annually, and achieved a relative concentration of over 1000 households of farmers.
The "Agriculture, Forestry and Water Township" in Youyou Village, Langxia Town is a key ecological node project of the second phase of the municipal land improvement project, and also a popular check-in point for Langxia Countryside Park. This place not only boasts picturesque scenery, but also undertakes the functions of ecological restoration and natural protection. "Previously, direct discharge of agricultural wastewater into rivers would have an impact on the environment. Now, through the use of an agricultural forestry wet composite system for purification, not only can agricultural non-point source pollution be effectively reduced, but the nitrogen and phosphorus in the wastewater also become nutrients, promoting plant growth and attracting various organisms such as birds and frogs to inhabit here. The regional ecological environment has been significantly improved," said Chen Xuechu, a professor at the School of Ecology and Environmental Science at East China Normal University, who has been conducting scientific research demonstrations here for a long time.
Plan every inch of land clearly
Simply increasing arable land cannot meet the needs of urban and rural revitalization. The types of land in rural areas are diverse and complex, and idle resources are generally scattered and small in size. It is difficult for large enterprises to directly settle in, which can meet the development volume, not activate and waste. Some companies have diversified land needs, and it is difficult to find suitable locations without advance planning and coordination.
The Songlin Building Pig Farm is a typical example. Although it has significant benefits, it requires extremely high land requirements and requires facilities for agricultural land, along with a certain amount of vegetable fields and research land. Langxia Town combines land supply through early project planning and spatial planning design to meet the needs of enterprises.
According to the plan, on the one hand, the Songlin Building Pig Farm will carry out comprehensive land improvement, vacating 102 acres of agricultural land for facilities, constructing a 4-story commercial pig fattening house, achieving an annual output of 120000 pigs, and meeting the production capacity target of the entire area. However, traditional bungalow pig farming requires 640 acres to achieve this output. On the other hand, facilities and vegetable fields will be synchronously configured in the surrounding areas to turn the manure and urine of the pig farm into treasure, constructing a "pig biogas vegetable" circular ecological model. Biogas can be used to generate electricity to meet the daily electricity needs of pig farm workers, and natural gas can also be purified and used in pipelines. Biogas liquid and dry manure can be transported to farmland and vegetable bases as organic fertilizers, providing energy for modern urban agricultural industries.
According to calculations, the pig farm can generate 3.6 million kilowatt hours of electricity at full load throughout the year. After natural gas is combined, it can save about 10000 yuan in costs per day. The annual production of organic fertilizer is 3000 tons, and the average use of fertilizer in the nearly 9000 acre vegetable base is reduced by about 50%. The annual carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced by 20000 tons, truly achieving cost reduction, low environmental pollution, high resource utilization, ecological cycle, and environmentally friendly green development.
Represented by the Songlin Pig Farm, Langxia Town is building a comprehensive land improvement platform for the entire area. The plan is to optimize the layout first, allowing all parties to participate in an orderly manner and effectively integrate various resources. At present, Langxia Town has become one of the only two pilot projects reported to the Ministry of Natural Resources in Shanghai, exploring the creation of the "Shanghai Experience" and "Shanghai Model" for comprehensive land improvement in the entire region.
Another pilot project, Maogang Town in Songjiang District, has also begun to take effect. The original cultivated land in Maogang Town has been significantly fragmented, and there is a high demand from farmers to improve their living conditions. The rural industrial level is relatively low, and the contradiction between forest and paddy land is prominent. There is a strong demand for spatial optimization. After the pilot project was launched, the city, district, and town cooperated to prepare and improve the planning of suburban unit villages, carried out village design, and coordinated various spatial elements by building a planning action platform, planning and arranging various construction actions, achieving the goal of "planning every inch of land clearly before starting construction".
After the regularization of Maogang Town in Songjiang, a large area of farmland has been formed
At present, the planning of suburban unit villages and the implementation plan for comprehensive land improvement in Maogang Town have been approved by the district government, and various individual projects are actively being implemented. It is expected that by 2025, the net increase in arable land area will exceed 5%, and the number and area of fragmented arable land patches under 5 acres will be significantly reduced. The layout of permanent basic farmland will become more concentrated and contiguous. At the same time, all farmers in Huangqiao Village, Yaojing Village, and Caojiabang Village will live together, equipped with public service facilities, improve the ecological environment, and build new rural communities that are livable, suitable for business, and suitable for tourism.
Maogang Town, Songjiang
In addition, Maogang Town has implemented land policies such as "collective operating construction land entering the market" and "point land supply" to attract high-quality rural industries to land as soon as possible and strengthen the vitality of the collective economy. Relying on the policy of collective commercial construction land entering the market, Huangqiao Village collaborates with social capital to jointly build the "Caohejing Development Zone Huangqiao Science and Technology Park". "Huangqiao Village has built an industrial park in the southern part of the village, making it a reality for villagers to work at their doorstep and creating conditions for young people to stay in the countryside. With production development, rural revitalization has a foundation," said Zhang Yongqiang, former village branch secretary.
Draw a blueprint to the end
Based on the two pilot explorations of Maogang Town and Langxia Town, Shanghai will further replicate and promote them.
In 2022, Shanghai issued the "Opinions on Implementing Comprehensive Land Improvement in the Whole Region", gradually establishing a mechanism and policy framework for the implementation of comprehensive land improvement in the whole region, and forming a number of replicable and promotable successful models. From point to surface, from the surface to the inside, a new pattern of rural land space with Jiangnan pastoral characteristics and super urban characteristics has been basically built.
On the one hand, building an efficient implementation platform. Rural revitalization cannot do without strengthening industries. But in the traditional model, when enterprises invest in rural areas, they always encounter natural conditions and planning constraints, making it difficult to exert their skills. In order to solve this problem, Shanghai recently built a platform for social capital to participate in comprehensive land consolidation, tailoring land resources for enterprise development. The service platform for comprehensive land consolidation and rural industrial development has been officially launched on the Shanghai United Property Rights Exchange, which releases various investment information from local governments and provides market-oriented services such as transaction matching.
"We assist each town in sorting out relevant investment information, accumulating years of investor resources through property rights transactions and capital operations, and conducting further precise promotion and negotiations," said Zhao Hongguang, Vice President of Shanghai United Property Rights Exchange.
On the other hand, we will steadily promote pilot projects for comprehensive land consolidation across the entire region. On the basis of the two pilot projects of Maogang Town in Songjiang District and Langxia Town in Jinshan District, we will link strategic spaces such as one river, two wings flying together, five new cities, north-south transformation, and Chongming world-class ecological island, and continue to promote the pilot work of comprehensive land consolidation in the entire region according to the path of overall planning, design, and comprehensive implementation.
