With farm groups and local communities pushing back against the government's planned nationwide farmland audit, the governing party moved to reassure them, saying people who actually farm would not be penalized.

The audit is intended to identify farmland holdings that do not meet the self-cultivation requirement under the Farmland Act. In principle only those who intend to use land for agricultural management may own it; otherwise a disposal obligation arises.

Concern on the ground centers on cases where the line is unclear: owners too old to work the land who have handed it to a neighbor, city residents who inherited plots, and buyers preparing to move into farming. All could be swept into the same review.

The party has proposed separating documentary review from on-site inspection and spelling out the grounds on which entrusted cultivation is recognized. The agriculture ministry is also said to be weighing publishing the criteria in advance.

There is also debate about how effective the exercise can be. Establishing who owns what requires matching property registers, farmland records and actual cultivation logs, and discrepancies among those sources are common.

Farmland sits where speculation disputes overlap with food self-sufficiency. Applied strictly, the rules collide with how farming actually works; applied loosely, the purpose of the system blurs.

The government is to announce the schedule and detailed criteria later. How many disposal orders actually follow from the findings will be the measure of how the system operates.