Innovative farmer switches nuts to protect ecology

Villagers thought Chen Xijin was nuts - in more ways than one - when he felled all his chestnut trees in Liaoning province in 2006.

And his decision to switch his cash crop of choice to a different nut was not popular at first with his wife, Tang Xiufen. "How can we make a living without the chestnuts?" Tang recalled saying at the time, as she could not understand why he had replaced nearly 4.5 hectares of chestnut trees with pine saplings.

But after 12 years, Chen's saplings have grown into a thriving pine forest, and he earned more than 60,000 yuan ($9,400) last year by selling pine nuts.