In barren land, money now grows on trees
(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-03-01 05:40

Ancient Chinese legend has it that a kind of tree, when shaken, yields leaves that turn into money on the ground.

But those living on the dry loess highlands in Northwest China couldn't see a single tree when they looked around.

Now, holding a mobile phone while sitting on a couch in his spacious tree-shaded cave dwelling, this farmer-turned-entrepreneur was talking about the tree business.

Yan Zhixiong chief executive officer of Linhai Co, a local forestation company was negotiating with local officials from his county, Wuqi of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

If the contract is signed, each of his 200 employees would earn around 1,000 yuan (US$123) a month for planting trees.

Yan discovered the business opportunity from a government-backed tree-planting programme that encourages farmers to convert low-yielding farms and barren hills into woods and grasslands. It's one of six such projects the government launched in 1998.

Last November, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) attributed almost all the annual gains in Asia's forest cover between 2000 and 2005 ?about 633,000 hectares per year ?to China's widespread tree-planting projects.

The expansion offset a net loss of around 1.27 million hectares of forest per year in other areas from 1990 to 2000, said Patrick Durst, senior forestry officer of the FAO's Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, in a recent e-mail interview.

"It is evident that China's efforts and commitment to these programmes have been remarkable,?Durst said.

The government has spent a lot of money on these efforts, and Durst also praised forestry officials?technical expertise in implementing the programmes.

As a result, the environment has been enhanced because of China's widespread planting, he said.

But as laudable as improving the environment is, local farmers in Shaanxi Province, such as Yan, see land conversion as a chance to make a fortune.

Yan and two other villagers started the company with a 1,000-yuan (US$123) investment three years ago. They did it because Wuqi County, forerunner of the nation's tree-planting project, allocated 100,000 hectares in that area.

Since then, the local government has carried out a tree-planting campaign every spring in the areas designated for the conversion.

"The government can't plant so many trees in such a short period of time,?Yan said. "They need to resort to private contractors.?

Last year Yan signed a contract to convert about 667 hectares. The county government spent 750 yuan (US$93) per hectare on saplings. Yan's company grows its own saplings at lower cost and makes a profit from the price difference.

The business has earned 4 million yuan (US$493,200) so far that way ?a big leap for the small village in Shaanxi, where farmers had been bound to the yellow earth for centuries and earned an average of 600 yuan (US$74) annually after the opening-up reform in the late 1970s.

The growth of wealth helped the village become a better place to live in. Before the tree-planting project, 97 per cent of land in the county suffered from erosion, not to mention a lack of good roads, electricity and clean water.

But the village turned from infertile yellow to lush green in a few short years. According to figures from the Wuqi County forest and grassland office, from 1997 to 2005, vegetation expanded from 22.4 per cent to 49.6 per cent, and erosion fell from 15,280 to 8,800 tons per square kilometre.

"I used to sleep in a wind-blown home and walked with sand in my mouth, nose and ears,?county official Lei Mingjun recalled. "But now we rarely see sandstorms and strong wind.?

Wild animals including foxes, pigs and wolves, which had disappeared in the 1970s and 80s, returned to the village's surrounding brush, Lei added.

At the beginning, many farmers thought the idea of conversion was crazy.

"What will feed us if we don't plough??asked Yuan Qiyi, a farmer in Wuqi County who later quit growing crops and started a transportation business.

But he soon changed his mind when he was offered a cash and grain subsidy worth more than they could earn by growing crops from dawn to dusk.

In addition, 50 yuan (US$6.16) worth of saplings (about 300 to 500) and 20 yuan (US$2.5) in cash are given to a farmer every year to start planting. Farmers may get the subsidy for up to eight years as long as 80 per cent of the trees they plant remain alive. Local forest stations are in charge of auditing the growth of half-year-old saplings.

"The policy guarantees stable income?compared with the scarce outcome from their unproductive, hilly land, Yuan Qiyi said. "We then had lived purely on luck.?

The Yuan family ?the farmer, his wife and a daughter ?converted 1.6 hectares. They make 1,280 yuan (US$158) a year from the government's reimbursement.

The family also kept 0.4 hectare to grow crops. But this time, instead of planting low-yielding millet, the local government introduced them to such cash crops as taro, corn and soybeans, which resulted in a profit of 2,000 yuan (US$247) in 2004.

Including his transportation business, Yuan's household income jumped from about 600 yuan (US$73.98) in 1998 to 60,000 yuan (US$7,400) in 2005. "I bought my daughter at college a cellphone so that we can talk anytime,?Yuan said.

About 105,000 residents in Wuqi receive the same subsidy.

Now being implemented in 25 provinces and regions in China, the programme is one of the most popular policies among farmers.

The policy started a massive tree-planting campaign in 1998 after a flood on the Yangtze River, the longest river in China, claimed thousands of lives and destroyed thousands of homes. Some experts blamed land deterioration and the destruction of forests in the upstream areas for the disaster.

The campaign includes six programmes: to return arable land to forests and grasslands; to protect the natural forests; to build sand-break forests surrounding Beijing and Tianjin; to plant shelter forests in North, Northwest and Northeast China and along the Yangtze River; to preserve the natural wildlife reserves and to grow fast-growing forests.

State Forestry Administration figures show that 25.32 million hectares of green land have been created as a result of a 126.3 billion yuan (US$15.6 billion) total investment on the six tree-planting campaigns since 1998.

As a result, erosion in China has decreased from 3.67 million to 3.56 million square metres in the past 10 years, according to the second national land erosion survey and the monitoring report from the Ministry of Water Resources. The Yangtze and Yellow river valleys were major beneficiaries.

Among the six programmes, the return of arable land to forests and grasslands plays a crucial role, making up 60 per cent of newly added vegetation in the country, or more than 90 per cent in the western provinces.

Through the conversion programme by the end of 2005, China built up 8.67 million hectares of forests from farmland.

Seeing its significant effect, the government, in its 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10), will continue the programme.

Under this programme, by 2010, China will plant trees on 9 million hectares, of which 2.3 million hectares are converted from farmland.

However, farmers have concerns for which the government to work out solutions.

Although the central government's plans last for five years, how to sustain the programme after the eight-year subsidies end remains a concern.

Will the subsidies carry on beyond eight years, and will the farmers keep the trees they planted or chop them down after the subsidies end? And how will the created forests be preserved?

"Farmers are very practical,?said Xiang Hu, who led a research team organized by the Friends of Nature, a Chinese environmental non-government organization, in 2003. "Farmers plant trees only when they get incentive.?

Xiang conducted a survey among 64 households in Gusheng village in Southwest China's Guizhou Province. More than 40 per cent of the respondents interviewed said they turned their land only to get the subsidy.

"The subsidy won't go on like this forever,?Xiang said. "How to develop more money-making measures for the farmers is the priority.?

Xiang suggested those measures, including raising poultry encouraged by the government, should be introduced according to local conditions since China has such a vast area and wide diversity of conditions.

Durst, the FAO official, suggested it is now more readily acknowledged that guidelines and implementing procedures need to be flexible and adapted to local conditions and needs.

"We will definitely keep those trees,?said Hao Yujun, an official with the State Forestry Administration. One of the proposals is the country purchase the forests grown by the farmers and hire them to guard the trees.

Speaking of his tree-planting business, Yan Zhixiong already has a safety net planned that will shrink when his county is covered with trees and grass soon.

"We will plant trees elsewhere,?Yan said. "I am sure there are a lot of trees still to be planted on this large loess plateau.?

(China Daily 03/01/2006 page1)