More than 3.33 million hectares of China’s farmland, or nearly 3 percent, will be left uncultivated or planted with different crops each year by the end of 2020 in an effort to promote sustainable agricultural development, the Ministry of Agriculture said on Friday.?

Last year, 800,000 hectares of farmland in China was left to rest or planted with different crops each year as part of a pilot program, twice as much as in 2016, Zeng Yande, chief of the ministry’s department for plant supervision, said at a news conference.

The program, which began in 2016, has been implemented in areas such as those subject to severe water shortages to reduce farming intensity and ease worsening pollution caused by agricultural production.?

Over the past five years, annual grain output has remained at more than 600 billion kilos, resulting in adequate stock, and a slight decrease in grain production will not affect China’s food security, the ministry said.?

The pilot program has brought environmental benefits over the past two years. In mountainous areas of Jilin province where crop rotation was introduced, the use of fertilizers has decreased by more than 30 percent and the use of pesticides has fallen by about 50 percent, according to Zeng.