Farmers engaged in small-scale production of staple agricultural products will bear the brunt of China's World Trade Organization (WTO) membership, said an expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

However, Zhang Xiaoshan, director of the Rural Development Research Institute under the CASS, told the ongoing Fifth China Beijing International High-Tech Expo that farmers involved in the production of labor-intensive, high-value-added agricultural products in the eastern and coastal areas of China would be potential beneficiaries of the WTO.

Meanwhile in the northeastern and the middle regions mainly producing land-intensive cereals, soybeans and cotton, farmers would suffer loss of benefits.

There are more than 200 million small farmers in China, each household possessing 0.6 hectare of land on average, Zhang calculated.

Implementing its tariff quota commitments to the WTO meant China should replace 6.4 percent of its sowing area, and 6.5 percent of rural laborers would have to leave their farmland, and each farm laborer would lose 102 yuan on average, according to Zhang's survey.

Pure farmers, making up nearly 60 percent of the total across the country, would be direct victims of import influxes and readjustment of the agricultural structure, the expert noted.

Therefore, if China failed to take effective measures, the benefits generating from current domestic policies, which aim to increase farmers' income, would be offset by the impact of imports, he said.

Zhang took Jilin Province in Northeast China as an example.

Jilin is a large grain-producing province, and around 60 percent of its grain product is put to market, nearly twice the national average. Grain production makes up 60 to 70 percent of local farmers' household income.

The province produced 19.5 million tons of grain in 2001, of which 80 percent was maize. However, China's large maize consumers, mainly in the coastal and southern areas, were turning to maize imports, which were cheaper and better quality.

China's abolition of subsidies for maize exports came as another blow. Import increases and export decreases had become a pattern in China's maize trade. Maize exports were expected to reach two million tons this year and imports, over three million tons, Zhang estimated.