This presentation, given at the Forests Asia conference in Jakarta in May 2014 informs direct impact of CCFP to grain productivity and livelihood improvement.

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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

5. Investment structure of CCFP II of monitoring counties in 2012

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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;

10. Change of grain area and grain output volume of CCFP 100
monitoring counties
Grain area
increase 9.48%
Grain volume
increase 24.12%

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

12. Change of cropland and forestland of sample farmer
households
18.52
10.89
8.40 9.26
8.34 8.85 9.53 9.25 9.85 9.59 10.05
3.48
10.93
13.86
16.51 16.80
18.04 18.69
19.69
23.11
24.25
26.58
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
1998 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
mu/household
cropland forestland

13. Change of CCFP HH’ grain output volume
Total grain -9.28%
corn 12.01%
Wheat -30.52%
rice -10.87%
Root crop -24.15%

14. 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

15. 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

16. Gross fodder production of CCFP monitoring HH

17. 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

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

19. Change of grain yield per mu of CCFP counties and HH
HH increase 74.01%
Counties increase 13.36%

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

21. Dependent Variable: GRAIN_OUTPUT
Method: Panel Least Squares
Date: 04/27/14 Time: 16:18
Sample (adjusted): 1999 2012
Cross-sections included: 98
Total 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 0.0000
GRAINSUB 13.54254 0.846971 15.98937 0.0000
IRRIAREA 2.238077 0.256190 8.735989 0.0000
FERTILIZER 2650.104 1195.543 2.216653 0.0270
DISASTER -0.008897 0.029147 -0.305263 0.7603
PER_CROPLAND -1326.416 2299.700 -0.576778 0.5643
CCFPAREA 1.762699 0.883512 1.995105 0.0464
PINCOME 6.260976 2.809942 2.228151 0.0262
R-squared 0.972839 Mean dependent var 192180.4
Adjusted R-squared 0.968247 S.D. dependent var 242609.3
S.E. of regression 43231.49 Akaike info criterion 24.32042
Sum squared resid 1.30E+12 Schwarz criterion 25.00581
Log likelihood -9815.890 F-statistic 211.8670
Durbin-Watson stat 1.022551 Prob(F-statistic) 0.000000

22. Discussion and future direction

23. G0G1
T1
T0
F1
F2
F3
PPF0 PPF1
Cropland
Forestland
Theory of environmental supply of CCFP
and it relation with agricultural production

26. 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;

27. 36.14%
6.56%
1998 2011
Change of poverty rate of monitoring
households

28. 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

29. 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%

30. • 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;

32. 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.