Central Dossier No. 1 to Focus on Agriculture(3)

It is said that in 2008, the government will boost its investments in pig farming by 250 billion yuan; funding that will be channeled to developing large-scale breeding projects. The extra funding has already begun this year when the government granted various allowances to farmers.

Based on official Ministry of Finance's statistics, the government has spent 391.7 billion yuan on the "three agriculture problems" this year, a 15.3 percent increase when compared to 2006. According to sources, next year's budget allocation for agriculture is expected to reach new heights yet again.

Ironically, many Chinese farmers have already abandoned agriculture as their main source of income. Xu Xiaoqing, deputy chief of the Rural Economy Research Unit under the State Council's Development Research Center, says research done by his team last year revealed that nearly half of the rural workforce also work in non-agricultural areas for income.

The research, which is based on data samples from 17 provinces and 2,749 villages, also discovered that about one fifth of the rural workforce had left their land to be based long-term in cities working in non-agricultural jobs. This, they say, has led in an increase in peasant income.