Today, damaged corn can be compensated at 15,255 yuan per hectare per season. While this does not cover all manual labor costs, it fully absorbs the price of seeds and fertilizer.
Rice and sugarcane have even higher compensation standards. For local farmers, the system does not erase every single loss, but it successfully establishes a manageable economic balance.
For 48-year-old villager and elephant monitor Yang Zhongping, the change is most visible at night.
Before the feeding zones were built, hungry herds did not limit themselves to open fields. After autumn harvests, when families stored grain inside their dwellings, elephants frequently breached houses in search of food, targeting household corn, rice and pig feed.
"Now elephants still occasionally enter villagers' homes, but the frequency is much lower," Yang said. "People do not have to be so worried at night."
Yang's family has about 0.8 hectares of corn, with roughly 0.5 hectares included in the food source base. For households capable of planting two crop seasons a year, damage compensation can reach up to 30,510 yuan per hectare annually if both harvests are impacted — a safety net that makes sharing land with wildlife viable.
Yet, an edible buffer cannot solve every operational hurdle. Yang grows significantly more tea and coffee than corn. While elephants do not eat tea or coffee, they can still trample the plants while moving through the area. Around 2017, about 900 coffee trees across 0.2 hectares of his land were damaged. Based on current coffee prices, he estimated the loss would be about 20,000 yuan.
Economic crops can also be compensated, but villagers said the payments often fall short of actual losses. Bai Xiao, another Nanbanghe villager, manages about 5.3 hectares of coffee outside the food source base. Last year, elephants trampled about one-tenth of the plantation and the compensation did not fully cover the loss, he said.
This is where wildlife insurance and targeted financial tools step in to bridge the gap.
Wildlife liability insurance is the first line of compensation when elephants damage crops. Yang Zhou, chief of statistics and research at the Pu'er branch of the People's Bank of China, said the insurance mechanism is direct and necessary, but cannot cover all losses. For losses beyond insurance, local banks are guided to support affected farmers through loan extensions, adjusted repayment plans and renewed credit.
More importantly, he said, villagers need stronger income sources so they don't rely solely on compensation.
The local approach is to let lower-cost crops such as corn, rice and sugarcane serve partly as elephant food in suitable areas, while encouraging farmers to develop coffee and other industries on surrounding slopes and valleys. As coffee prices have risen in recent years, those earnings can help offset losses that insurance does not fully cover.
"When villagers' income is protected, they are more willing to plant food elephants like and guide them to those areas," Yang Zhou said. "That forms a positive cycle for human-elephant coexistence."
Financial credit has become the engine driving this cycle. By midyear, outstanding bank loans to Pu'er's expanding coffee sector reached nearly 3.2 billion yuan — a 45.56 percent increase year-on-year. Local farmers easily qualify for unsecured credit, while those possessing collateral or business licenses can secure higher borrowing limits.
Financial institutions have also developed coffee-related products. The Agricultural Bank of China's Pu'er branch launched a coffee loan product covering seedling purchases, standardized planting, field management, processing and sales. Simao Rural Commercial Bank introduced "Xingka Loan", a coffee-related credit product that uses coffee beans and other assets to help solve the problem of insufficient collateral.
According to the People's Bank of China's Pu'er branch, in the first half of 2026, the weighted average interest rate on newly issued loans in Pu'er was 3.55 percent. During the same period, the weighted average rate on newly issued loans to coffee enterprises was only 2.42 percent.
Li borrowed 100,000 yuan through a coffee loan in 2025 and expanded her coffee planting to more than 0.7 hectares. She had grown coffee before, but high input costs made large-scale planting difficult. With credit support and better purchase prices, she decided to invest more.
Bai borrowed 500,000 yuan from Simao Rural Commercial Bank through "Xingka Loan" in January 2025, with an annual interest rate of 3.45 percent. He also borrowed 300,000 yuan from the Agricultural Bank of China for coffee production. Last year, coffee beans were purchased at 7 yuan per kilogram, and his profit exceeded 100,000 yuan.
Still, Bai said coexistence with the wild elephants remains complicated. When elephants are nearby, villagers may avoid going out to farm or return home early for safety. In some ways, the food source base has made the area more attractive to elephants, which means monitoring and warnings remain essential.
Pu'er's model is therefore not a claim that human-elephant conflict has disappeared. It is a way to make the conflict more manageable. Food source bases guide elephants toward crops planted partly for them. Insurance reduces the financial shock of damage. Coffee loans help villagers build other income streams. Monitoring teams warn people before encounters turn dangerous.
For Nanbanghe, the elephant canteen is not simply a field of corn and sugarcane. It is part of a negotiated space between a recovering wild population and the people who live beside it.
Contact the writers at houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn
