Desertification, the Grain-To Green Program, and Agricultural Changes in Northern China

Major changes in the Chinese national political economy have taken place over the last 30 years. One result of these modifications is that farmers in the hinterlands usually became marginalized. Ironically, this occurs when China's national food security increasingly depends on crop production from northern China, an area where drylands comprise a large percentage of farmland and farmer marginalization is widespread. Increasing environmental deterioration in northern China is associated with these dynamics. Since the late 1990s, several major environmental programs attempted to address the environmental and developmental issues in western and northern China. Paramount in this regard is the Grain-to-Green Program (GGP). How it affected peasant farming within the Ordos Plateau and Zhangye Oasis is examined in this study. Farmers' responses to environmental constraints as well as government policies and the environmental implications of these responses are the foci of this research. Based on a household survey, agrarian changes in four case study villages reveal critical environmental outcomes of the GGP. Specifically: (1) How peasant farmers in Shabianzi assimilated grassland enclosure through agricultural intensification. The close linkage between crop and livestock production and reduced pressure on grasslands in this area resulted in impressive environmental improvement; (2) In the upland community of Wangjiliang , the GGP failed to stimulate meaningful agricultural intensification. On the contrary, pressure from the GGP upset the previous co-herding system leading to increases in livestock numbers. A result of this system alteration was rampant desertification; and (3) How in Manjiamiao and Guangsheng Communities, contrasting pathways of agricultural intensification and disintensification created local economic and environmental improvements. But, these improvements increased off-site land degradation in surrounding regions.;This research shows the complex interactions between the physical environment, government policies, and human activities in determining the environmental outcomes of environmental programs like the GGP. It also stresses the significance of pathways undertaken by local peasant farmers in understanding the environmental outcomes of the GGP. This place-based approach to desertification research illustrates that it is necessary to understand fine yet meaningful changes at local scales that can be easily glossed over in regional studies.