Attitudes of farmers in China's northern Shaanxi Province towards the land-use changes required under the Grain for Green Project, and implications for the project's success

Abstract

To restore China's degraded environment, the government launched an environmental restoration project named the “Grain for Green” Project (GGP) in 1999. From 1999 to 2010, the government will spend US$ 40 billion to convert 147 million ha of farmland into forest and grassland and 173 million ha of wasteland (including abandoned farmland) into forest in 25 provinces. A primary focus is to replace farming and livestock grazing in fragile areas with reforestation and planting of forage crops. Given the project's tremendous size and number of participants, the attitudes of the affected farmers will strongly influence the GGP's success. To learn their attitudes, we surveyed 2000 farmers in 2005 to quantify their opinions of the GGP and how it has affected their livelihoods, and we discuss the concerns raised by these attitudes. Farmers appreciated the grain and financial compensation offered by the GGP, but few considered planting of trees (8.9%) or forage species (2.2%) to be a priority. Although only 19.1% felt that their livelihoods had been adversely affected by the GGP and 63.8% supported the project, a large proportion (37.2%) planned to return to cultivating forested areas and grassland once the project's subsidies end in 2018. Therefore, much of the restored vegetation risks being converted into farmland and rangeland again, compromising the sustainability of the environmental achievements. To succeed, strategies such as the GGP must compensate farmers fairly for their costs, create new agricultural products and techniques for use on more suitable land, and create job and training programs that account for the needs and desires of farmers and give them alternatives to returning to old land-use practices.