Study On The Impact Of Grain For Green On Household Income And Poverty Reduction

Grain for Green is one of the largest ecological protection projects with the largest financial input,the widest coverage and the largest rural population in our country and even in the world.After more than 20 years of continuous construction,China has converted farmland to forests covering a total area of 34.333 million hm2,with a total investment of more than 500 billion yuan.The estimated value of the increased ecological benefits is 138 million yuan.The implementation of Grain for Green has not only achieved great ecological benefits,but also profoundly affected the change of the way of using farmland and the mode of production for the farmers who convert their farmland to forests,and then had an important impact on the income of farmers.How to ensure the implementation of Grain for Green can improve the ecological environment while taking into account the income of farmers is an important goal of our government.Whether the family income can be effectively improved is an important theoretical and policy issue related to the sustainable development of Grain for Green.However,whether the project can increase the income of farmers and to what extent it affects the income level of farmers are still controversial and need further study.At the same time,the project of converting farmland to forests,as a major national ecological project for poverty alleviation,also needs to play a key role in improving the income of farmers in poor areas and consolidating the achievements in poverty alleviation.However,the evaluation of poverty reduction effect of Grain for Green has not been studied effectively and should be paid attention to.Based on this,this paper uses the rural household survey data in the China Household Income Survey(CHIP 2013),and adopts several endogenous conversion models(MESR)and endogenous conversion model(ESR)to construct a“counterfactual” analysis framework.Firstly,according to the logical framework of participation or not,participation degree and participation opportunity,this paper evaluates the impact of participation in Grain for Green on farmers’ income as a whole,and clarifies the impact mechanism of participation in Grain for Green on farmers’ income.Secondly,to test the poverty reduction effect of Grain for Green,and to evaluate the impact of Grain for Green on the income of farmers with different poverty levels.The conclusions of this paper are as follows.First,compared with the counterfactual situation of farmers who have not participated in the process of the project,the low degree of returning to farmland will reduce the per capita disposable income of farmers,and the high degree of returning to farmland will increase the per capita income of farmers who have returned to farmland.Compared with the counterfactual results,the average disposable income of the households whose farmland was returned to the state earlier had no significant impact on the average disposable income of the households.Secondly,in terms of the family income level,the participation in the conversion significantly increased the per capita disposable income of general and severe poverty farmers,and the effect of severe poverty farmers was more obvious.Among them,the per capita transfer income and per capita operating income have a direct impact on the income of farmers with severe poverty,and the per capita transfer income and per capita operating income of farmers with severe poverty participating in the conversion of farmland increased by 15.9% and 18.6% respectively,compared with the counterfactual fact that they did not participate in the conversion of farmland.The indirect effects of Grain for Green on the income of farmers with different poverty levels are as follows:the average wage income of non-poor farmers,general poor farmers and severely poor farmers has increased by 4.0%,7.9% and 24.6% respectively,that is to say,the average wage income has positive indirect effects on farmers with different poverty levels,and the indirect effects are greater with the deepening of poverty levels.Based on the above conclusions,the following policy recommendations are made:(1)Establish and improve the long-term mechanism for consolidating the achievements of Grain for Green,and steadily promote the implementation of the project of Grain for Green.For farmers whose farmland is converted earlier,in order to avoid the possibility of “resumption of farmland” due to the expiry of the subsidy period,income reduction and other reasons,the compensation period shall be extended,while for farmers whose farmland is converted later,the economic effects of the transfer of surplus labor force may be unstable and unclear in a short time,so the subsidy standards for this part of farmers may be directly increased.(2)Steadily expand the scale of Grain for Green,and enhance the participation of farmers who convert their farmland to forests.First of all,to further strengthen policy advocacy,incentives for farmers who do not participate in increasing the willingness to participate in the conversion.Secondly,for small-scale farmers with low conversion of farmland to farmland,we can guide them to expand the scale of conversion of farmland by increasing the budget for enhancing their production capacity(agricultural and non-agricultural employment capacity)in the project funds to enhance their ability to engage in non-agricultural employment and alternative livelihoods.(3)Differentiated subsidies shall be granted to farmers with different poverty levels.More funds will be given to poor farmers who are relatively poor,especially those who are more sensitive to subsidies for returning farmland to the state.At the same time,the relatively poor people shall be given priority in the project of Grain for Green,and the allocation efficiency of subsidy funds for poverty alleviation and poverty alleviation and the poverty alleviation performance of ecological construction projects shall be improved through the precise targeting of projects and funds.