China’s Grain for Green Program
China’s Grain for Green Program

Author: Claudio O. Delang

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-11-07

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 3319115057

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book provides a comprehensive review of Grain for Green, China’s nationwide program which pays farmers to revert sloping or marginal farm land to trees or grass. The program aims to improve the ecological conditions of much of China, and the socioeconomic circumstances of hundreds of millions of people. GfG is the largest reforestation, ecological restoration, and rural development initiative in history, combining the biggest investment, the greatest involvement, and the broadest degree of public participation ever. The book is organised in three sections. Part One reviews the history of land management in China from 1949 to 1998, exploring the conditions that led to the introduction of GfG, and comparing it to other reforestation programs. Part Two offers an overview of GfG, describing the timeline of the program, compensation paid to farmers, the rules concerning land and plant selection, the extent to which these rules were followed, the attitudes of farmers towards the program, and the way in which the program is organized and implemented by various state actors. Part Three discusses the impact of the GfG, from both ecological and socio-economic standpoints, looking at the economic benefits that result from participating in the GfG, the impact of the GfG across local economies, the redistribution of the labor force and the sustainability of the program, in particular the question of what will happen to the converted land when payments to farmers end.

Unintended Land Use Effects of Afforestation in China's Grain for Green Program
Unintended Land Use Effects of Afforestation in China's Grain for Green Program

Author: Youpei Yan

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The aim of China's Grain for Green Program is to reduce soil erosion by subsidizing reforestation of farmland located on steep slopes with low crop productivity. I show theoretically that the incentives created by the program combined with insufficient oversight have led to afforestation of non-sloped highly productive farmland. With a unique land transition dataset, I show that this unintended land use effect has been substantial, amounting to nearly one-fifth of the total amount of cropland converted to forest. This unexpected displacement of highly productive farmland represents a form of slippage/leakage that has not been fully explored in the literature on payment for ecosystem services programs. This form of land displacement is significant in the context of China as well as other countries with limited arable land relative to population size as it can negatively impact national food production targets and self-sufficiency goals.

The Impact of China's Grain for Green Program on Farmer's Income
The Impact of China's Grain for Green Program on Farmer's Income

Author: Yu Lu

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Grain for Green Program (GFGP) in China, one of the largest Payment for Ecosystem Service (PES) schemes, has been regarded as an effective approach to achieving sustainable development. However, the conclusion of the impact of GFGP on farmers' income reported in the existing literature is still controversial. It is crucial to find the combined effect of the impact of the GFGP on farmers' income and the causes of the heterogeneous effects. In this paper, the impact of the GFGP on farmers' income with different income sources was analyzed by using the Meta-analysis method with 66 domestic and international studies from 1999 to 2022. The farmers' income was further divided into four different income groups, total income (including subsidies), total income (excluding subsidies), farm income, and off-farm income. It is noteworthy that the differences in methodology, such as measurement of independent variables, data acquisition methods, sample regions, and the choice of estimation model could affect the results of the impact of the GFGP on farmers' income. Thus, the heterogeneous effect of methodology had been conducted further. The results demonstrated: (1) The GFGP had a significant positive impact on total income (including subsidies) and off-farm income. However, the GFGP on total income (including subsidies) is not significant, and it may harm the farm income. (2) Using continuous variables (area of participation and years of participation) had higher estimated coefficients as opposed to using binary variables (whether to participate). (3) The effect of using primary data on total income (excluding subsidies) and off-farm income was higher than using secondary data. (4) The impact of the GFGP on farmers' off-farm income was strongest in the central region, followed by the western region, and weakest in the nationwide region. The sample regions had no significant difference in other income groups. (5) The GFGP also had smaller effects on total income (including subsidies), total income (excluding subsidies), and off-farm income using the endogenous model compared to not using the model.

An Integrated Assessment of China’s Ecological Restoration Programs
An Integrated Assessment of China’s Ecological Restoration Programs

Author: Runsheng Yin

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2009-07-14

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 904812655X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

China has been undertaking unprecedented ecological restoration efforts to deal with its problems of soil erosion, flooding, dust storms, and habitat loss. While there have been studies of these efforts, questions remain concerning whether they have been effectively implemented, what their induced socioeconomic and ecological impacts are, and how their performance can be improved. Tackling these important questions in an integrated manner, “An Integrated Assessment of China’s Ecological Restoration Programs” is extraordinary for its broad coverage and methodological rigor. It provides a substantial improvement over the conventional approach of simply reporting projects undertaken and accepting uncritically the government assessment, and thus fills an important knowledge gap of the restoration efforts being implemented upon a variety of ecosystems in China.

Environmental Governance in China
Environmental Governance in China

Author: Jesse Turiel

Publisher: Brill Research Perspectives in

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 67

ISBN-13: 9789004359918

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This article provides an analytical overview of major works on the topic of environmental governance in China, with a particular emphasis on studies examining policies during the reform era (post-1978). We begin by exploring the rise of China's "environmental state" and the various institutional and political factors that shape state behavior. Next, we describe the complex relationship between the Chinese state and society, analyzing studies related to environmental public opinion, citizen action, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), green civil society, the role of the media, and China's judiciary. Finally, we conclude by reviewing research on market-based mechanisms of environmental governance in China, including emissions trading schemes, environmental transparency, corporate information disclosure, and green finance.

Red China's Green Revolution
Red China's Green Revolution

Author: Joshua Eisenman

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-04-24

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 0231546750

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

China’s dismantling of the Mao-era rural commune system and return to individual household farming under Deng Xiaoping has been seen as a successful turn away from a misguided social experiment and a rejection of the disastrous policies that produced widespread famine. In this revisionist study, Joshua Eisenman marshals previously inaccessible data to overturn this narrative, showing that the commune modernized agriculture, increased productivity, and spurred an agricultural green revolution that laid the foundation for China’s future rapid growth. Red China’s Green Revolution tells the story of the commune’s origins, evolution, and downfall, demonstrating its role in China’s economic ascendance. After 1970, the commune emerged as a hybrid institution, including both collective and private elements, with a high degree of local control over economic decision but almost no say over political ones. It had an integrated agricultural research and extension system that promoted agricultural modernization and collectively owned local enterprises and small factories that spread rural industrialization. The commune transmitted Mao’s collectivist ideology and enforced collective isolation so it could overwork and underpay its households. Eisenman argues that the commune was eliminated not because it was unproductive, but because it was politically undesirable: it was the post-Mao leadership led by Deng Xiaoping—not rural residents—who chose to abandon the commune in order to consolidate their control over China. Based on detailed and systematic national, provincial, and county-level data, as well as interviews with agricultural experts and former commune members, Red China’s Green Revolution is a comprehensive historical and social scientific analysis that fundamentally challenges our understanding of recent Chinese economic history.

Who Will Feed China?
Who Will Feed China?

Author: Lester Brown

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-08-18

Total Pages: 109

ISBN-13: 1000968499

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Originally published in 1995, but with enduring relevance in a time of global population growth and food insecurity, when it was first published, this book attracted much global attention, and criticism from Beijing. It argued that even as water becomes scarcer in a land where 80% of the grain crop is irrigated, as per-acre yield gains are erased by the loss of agricultural land to industrialization, and as food production stagnates, China still increases its population by the equivalent of a new Beijing each year. This book predicts that in an integrated world economy, China’s rising food prices will become the world’s rising food prices. China’s land scarcity will come everyone’s land scarcity and water scarcity in China will affect the entire world. China’s dependence on massive imports, like the collapse of the world’s fisheries, will be a wake-up call that we are colliding with the earth’s capacity to feed us. Over time, Janet Larsen argued, China’s leaders came to ‘acknowledge how Who Will Feed China? changed their thinking..’ As China’s wealth increases, so do the dietary demands of its population. The increasing middle classes demand more grain-intensive meat and farmed fish. The issue of who will feed China has not gone away.

Growth and Evolution in China's Agricultural Support Policies
Growth and Evolution in China's Agricultural Support Policies

Author: Fred Gale

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2014-04-04

Total Pages: 54

ISBN-13: 9781497528734

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

China is perhaps the most prominent example of a developing country that has transitioned from taxing to supporting agriculture. In recent years, Chinese price supports and subsidies have risen at an accelerating pace after they were linked to rising production costs. Per-acre subsidy payments to grain producers now equal 7 to 15 percent of those producers' gross income, but grain payments appear to have little influence on production decisions. Chinese authorities began raising price supports annually to bolster incentives, and Chinese prices for major farm commodities are rising above world prices, helping to attract a surge of agricultural imports. U.S. agricultural exports to China tripled in value during the period when China's agricultural support was accelerating. Overall, China's expansion of support is loosely constrained by World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments, but the country's price-support programs could exceed WTO limits in coming years. Chinese officials promise to continue increasing domestic policy support for agriculture, but the mix of policies may evolve as the Chinese agricultural sector becomes more commercialized and faces competitive pressures.