BEIJING — The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has called for accelerating the start or restart of high-standard farmland projects so as to reach the annual development goals.

The ministry made arrangements for high-standard farmland construction in 10 provincial-level regions including Zhejiang, Anhui and Fujian through video conferences on March 12 and March 13.

Efforts should be made to optimize modern rural infrastructure including high-standard farmland, water conservancy and agricultural mechanization projects to improve grain production and disaster prevention capacity, the meetings stressed.

To date, work has been resumed in over 90 percent of high-standard farmland projects in southern China except for Hubei province, the region hardest hit by the novel coronavirus epidemic, the ministry said.

The country vowed to cultivate 1 billion mu (about 67 million hectares) of high-standard farmlands by 2022 with a reliable grain production capacity of 500 billion kg.