Beijing, 13 sep (EFE).-the emigration of Chinese peasants in rural areas each year produces the abandonment of some two million hectares of farmland, today reported the local press, which collects data from the Ministry of land and resources.

More than half of china’s population still lives in rural areas, the most disadvantaged by that between 150 and 200 million farmers have moved into more developed eastern areas in search of employment in the last decades.

Due to the enormous gap between the incomes of the rural areas, the poorest, and urban, the richest, many farmers have abandoned their fields, said Zhang Fengtian, Professor at the school of agriculture and Rural development of the people’s University of Beijing.

Although this flow of emigration of labour benefits the economic development of Eastern China, also has become a major problem for rural development, as it collects today China Central television (CCTV).

China has with less than 12 percent of arable land to feed the world’s largest population, with 1,340 million, at the time that the abandonment of land, the advance of industry and the real estate and desertification are reducing the arable of China. EFE