Conversion of Cropland to Forests: how environmental benefit lead to

food security--evidence of China

XIE Chen

FEDRC, SFA, China

Forest Asia Summit, Jakarta, 5-6 May

Outline

• Conversion of Cropland to Forests Program

• CCFP policy related to food security

• CCFP monitoring system by FEDRC

• Direct impact of CCFP on grain production

• Indirect impact of CCFP on grain production

• Discussion and future direction

CCFP policy

• Over 32 million rural households involved.

• Up to 2013 more than US$42 billion invested.

• 27.55 million ha of land converted/afforested.

• 9.06 million ha of cropland enrolled.

• 15.80 million ha of barren/waste land enrolled.

• 2.68 million ha sealed off to allow natural regeneration (a.k.a. “closed mountain” afforestation)

• Currently one of the most wide-spread programs in rural China.

CCFP policy regarding grain security

• From forbidden intercropping to allow it;

• Allow economic tree plantation which mainly provide fruits, and other edible non-timber forest products;

• basic cropland construction and crop production has been part of program task since 2008

Investment structure of CCFP II of monitoring counties in 2012

CCFP monitoring system

• Since 2003, annual based and 300 personal network around China;

• 100 counties from 21 provinces considering CCFP tasks, geo-location and socio-economic conditions

• 120 villages from 100 counties

• 1165 farmers households from 120 villages

Indicators

• County: socio-economic condition, CCFP investment, program implementation, forest resources and main outputs;

• Village: land use change, main price of A&F products, geo-features;

• Households: population & labor migration, land use, input and output of family productions, CCFP subsidy, households consumption

Direct impact of CCFP on Grain production

• Increase supply of fruits, edible non-timber forests via economic tree on CCFP land;

• Reduced cropland and reduced grain volume at household level;

Change of grain area and grain output volume of CCFP 100 monitoring counties

Grain area increase 9.48%

Grain volume increase 24.12%

Change of CCFP monitoring HH’s cropland and grain production area

Change of cropland and forestland of sample farmer

households

18.52

10.89

8.409.26

8.34 8.85 9.53 9.25 9.85 9.59 10.05

3.48

10.93

13.86

16.51 16.8018.04 18.69

19.69

23.1124.25

26.58

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1998 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

mu/household

cropland forestland

Change of CCFP HH’ grain output volume

Total grain -9.28%

corn 12.01%

Wheat -30.52%

rice -10.87%

Root crop -24.15%

0

200000

400000

600000

800000

1000000

1200000

1998 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Total fruits volume CCFP fruits volume

30%

Contribution of CCFP to monitoring HH’ fruit output

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

20000

2009 2010 2011 2012

total tea-seed oil ccfp tea-seed oil

Tea seed oil production of CCFP monitoring HH

Gross fodder production of CCFP monitoring HH

Indirect impact

• Intensification of crop production;

• per unit area yield of grain has increasing;

• Increase of grain output larger than grain production area;

• Decline of natural disaster on crop

Change of effective irrigation area and fertilizer input of 100 CCFP monitoring counties

Change of grain yield per mu of CCFP counties and HH

HH increase 74.01%

Counties increase 13.36%

Change of crop damage area by natural disaster of 100 CCFP monitoring counties

Dependent Variable: GRAIN_OUTPUTMethod: Panel Least SquaresDate: 04/27/14 Time: 16:18Sample (adjusted): 1999 2012Cross-sections included: 98Total panel (unbalanced) observations: 817

Variable Coefficient Std. Error t-Statistic Prob.C 88488.06 10713.90 8.259183 0.0000

PAREAGRAIN 35.18393 8.094751 4.346512 0.0000GRAINSUB 13.54254 0.846971 15.98937 0.0000IRRIAREA 2.238077 0.256190 8.735989 0.0000

FERTILIZER 2650.104 1195.543 2.216653 0.0270DISASTER -0.008897 0.029147 -0.305263 0.7603

PER_CROPLAND -1326.416 2299.700 -0.576778 0.5643CCFPAREA 1.762699 0.883512 1.995105 0.0464PINCOME 6.260976 2.809942 2.228151 0.0262

R-squared 0.972839 Mean dependent var 192180.4Adjusted R-squared 0.968247 S.D. dependent var 242609.3S.E. of regression 43231.49 Akaike info criterion 24.32042Sum squared resid 1.30E+12 Schwarz criterion 25.00581Log likelihood -9815.890 F-statistic 211.8670Durbin-Watson stat 1.022551 Prob(F-statistic) 0.000000

Discussion and future direction

G0G1

T1

T0

F1

F2

F3

PPF0 PPF1

Cropland

Fore

st land

Theory of environmental supply of CCFP and it relation with agricultural production

1. CCFP is China’s massive efforts to reverse it’s thousand of years’ over exploring forestland and deforestation, rebalancing agriculture and forestry;

2. In its policy design, livelihood has always been fundamental concern, grain production has become part of CCFP policy in phase II;

3. CCFP increase rural poor’s food security by providing stable subsidy which guarantee their basic needs;

36.14%

6.56%

1998 2011

Change of poverty rate of monitoring households

16%Low income participants

‘The subsidy might be little to farmers who have heavy burden to support college students or care patient, but for that poor grandmother, it is almost all income for her year round’.

a survey student of Beijing Forestry University

4. CCFP encourage economic trees and intercropping which significantly increase’s farmers fruits and related foods directly;

Ecological trees

Economic trees

Both

9.52%

22.66%

63.49%

• 5. CCFP demonstrate that a developing country could balance it’s agricultural and forestry land use when it fully recognize importance of environmental conservation to rural development and using government finance to compensate its past environmental loss from its economic development gains;

6. Considerable research is needed to exploring the environmental benefit of re/afforesation, forest conservation to grain production and food security;

7. Relationship between forest environment and grain production at small holder and plot level should have considerable potential to explore from primary results of FEDRC-CIFRO ongoing project.