An ambitious plan is under way to withdraw all of China's existing cultivation on low-yield lands and slopes prone to soil erosion and eventually turn those areas into woods or grassland over the next 10 years, China Daily was told by the State Forestry Administration (SFA).

The central government is expected to pour a record 140 billion yuan (US$16.8 billion) into the effort -- the largest ecological programme ever launched in China -- to pay for the costs of grain rations and cash compensation for farmers forced to give up cultivating the lands, as well as providing seedlings for them to plant trees or grow grasses.

Under the proposed grain-for-vegetation environment plan to be submitted to the State Council for approval, over 70 percent of the funds will be earmarked for grain-supply, with over 9 percent to be handed to farmers as cash subsidies and the remaining funds to be used for seedlings, according to Zhang Hongwen, director of the office for conversion of slope farmland into forest and grassland.

More than 300 million people -- out of the country's 80 million rural households in 1,100 counties of 24 provinces and autonomous regions -- are expected to benefit from the program.

Trial work for the extended grain-for-environment project is likely to officially kick off this year. The initial project was established in 1999 in 224 counties of 13 western provinces and autonomous regions, including Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces.

More than 1 million hectares of sloping farmland have been transformed, and an additional 730,000 hectares of barren land now have vegetation, according to SFA's statistics.

During the past two years, the grain-for-environment policy has encouraged Chinese farmers with low-yield, sloping farmland to plant trees or grass on the area. Governments at all levels are responsible for compensating farmers with grain and cash.

The compensation is based on 150 kilograms of grain and 70 yuan (about US$8.50) given each year for every mu (0.07 hectare) of farmland converted to forests. Farmers can receive the compensation for eight years.

Grain and cash promised by governments in 1999 have been paid in full to farmers, and about 70 percent of the promised compensation for the year 2000 has been fulfilled, Zhang said.

China has an estimated 14.7 million hectares of low-yield sloping lands suitable for woodlots or grass-growing (including sloping farmland located on hillsides with a 16 to 25 gradient that has caused serious water loss and soil erosion) and lands with desert encroachment.

Soil erosion has become the top menace to China's ecological environment, damaging about 3.7 million square kilometres of land or 38 percent of China's total territory.

More than 2 billion tons of soil is washed into the Yangtze and the Yellow rivers annually, making the region one of the world's most vulnerable soil erosion areas.

"Two-thirds of the eroded soil comes from sloping farmland," Zhang said.

Forestry officials and experts are confident that a 10-year nationwide programme focusing on the recovery of China's worsening vegetation cover -- caused by growing population pressures, consequent excessive reclamation and soil erosion over past decades -- can make a valuable contribution to stemming the surging exploitation of the country's environmentally vulnerable western regions.

"It is difficult for China to face up to a situation in which the Yellow River has continued to run dry due to persistent droughts and worsening soil erosion while the Yangtze River tends to be muddy or turbid,with more floods induced because of soil erosion," Zhang said.

The two rivers are not only the major cradles of Chinese civilization in history but also the country's key bread baskets today.

"All sloping land will be turned into forest and grassland," Zhang added.

(China Daily November 5, 2001)