China will transform its 1,780 State-farms into agricultural enterprises as it attempts to further modernize its agricultural sector, a government official said on Monday.

Yang Shaopin, a senior official with the Ministry of Agriculture, told a news conference that the central government will transform State-farms into market entities, and develop them into modern agricultural groups.

"All the State-farms will become modern agricultural groups, even though it will be a slow transitional process," he said.

He made the comments in the wake of a guideline released by the central government on Dec 1 to further push forward the transformation of State-farms before 2020.

The guideline said the reform is intended to develop a number of agricultural production bases for grain, cotton, sugar, milk, seeds and oil. It also aims to further raise the income of workers, and improve the infrastructure and public services available to the workers.

The central government will also enhance the supervision of State-owned assets, as total assets of all State-farms in China have already exceeded 1 trillion yuan ($156 billion), he said.

The total GDP of the State-farms this year is expected to reach 701 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8 percent, he said.

Yang said the central government will also roll out new measures to protect farmland under the State-farms

So far, the property rights of only 66.4 percent of land owned by the State-farms have been confirmed, he said.