Let farmers truly enjoy the benefits of national policies
Recently, while researching ecological protection in a certain area of northwest China, the author saw that several villages had been combating desertification and planting trees for more than 20 years, building a solid green windbreak and sandbreak barrier on the edge of the Tengger Desert, yet many farmers had never received the national special subsidy for afforestation. One farmer sighed: “Direct agricultural subsidies are still better. National grain subsidies can be paid directly into our hands!”
Farmers are both the main force in farming and the main force in afforestation. Every year, the state allocates a huge amount of special subsidy funds to local governments to encourage and support farmers in afforestation. So why are there still farmers who cannot get the afforestation subsidies they deserve?
A specific analysis shows that there are roughly 4 reasons: first, some local governments divert special forestry subsidy funds to other uses and bundle the money into a certain project; second, some grassroots governments intercept special funds; third, some forestry departments, to save trouble, issue subsidies only to large-scale afforestation operators; fourth, they discount the amount, and although they do issue subsidies to farmers, they do not issue them in full. In short, there are still quite a few farmers who find it difficult to fully enjoy the benefits of the policy.
Compared with the highly mechanized operations of state-owned forest farms and specialized afforestation households, individual farmers face greater difficulty and higher costs in afforestation. Perhaps the several mu or several dozen mu of forest land of each farmer is negligible in terms of area, but from an overall perspective, hundreds of millions of farmers are the absolute main force in greening the mountains and rivers, and they should be even more entitled to the special forestry subsidies provided by the state.
The failure of special state subsidies for farmers to reach them, or to reach them in full, has been a chronic problem for many years. To cure it, it may be helpful to draw on the practice of the one-card system for direct grain subsidies. In 2004, the state promoted the one-card system for direct grain subsidies. Direct subsidy funds did not pass through any intermediate links and were directly allocated to farmers' accounts, effectively reducing the risk of fund interception and misappropriation, mobilizing farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain, promoting consecutive years of increased grain output and increased farmer income, and safeguarding national food security. Forestry can also adopt direct subsidies for special funds: whoever plants trees benefits, and the advantages are given directly to farmers.
From an operational perspective, the complexity of direct forestry subsidies is far less than that of direct grain subsidies. Tree planting and afforestation are basic work in ecological civilization construction. Relevant departments may first set up pilot projects and implement a one-card system for direct forestry subsidies to mobilize farmers' enthusiasm for afforestation. Once conditions are ripe, it can then be extended nationwide, so that hundreds of millions of farmers truly enjoy the dividends of national policies.