In rural China, the earth is moving, literally. A society based on agriculture is now attempting to undo centuries of environmental abuse - land erosion, desertification and climatic shifts - by planting trees across vast tracts of land.
The Sloped Land Conversion Project, also known as 'trading crops for forests', contracts farmers to plant trees on slopes which are relatively unsuitable for farming. To offset the loss of income, farmers are compensated in grain and cash subsidies. Seeing potential for non-farm employment, such as a job in the city or raising livestock in addition to the subsidies, farmers have generally responded favourably.
Local governments, hungry for state funds, have signed on to the project at a rate that has exceeded expectations and placed pressure on the central government to expand the campaign. Since 1999, the project has converted more than 4 million hectares of farmland and barren land to forest, and the government recently expanded the project to 25 provinces.
The response should be good news for environmentalists. Yet it raises questions as to who, if anyone, is profiting from the programme. Both farmers and the environment may lose more than they gain.
The danger of government manipulation of the farming population, which numbers nearly 250 million, is that once subsidies run out, the massive environmental engineering project may uproot itself.
The driving force behind the project is money, and the bad news is that money, just like land, is a limited resource. A study of farmers in several regions by the Chinese Academy of Sciences concludes that land conversion typically leads to a drop in income, which is barely compensated for by the subsidy. Despite some movement towards jobs away from farms, after a three-year pilot period, participants were still tied to the land. The government has until 2008 - when the subsidy period expires - to make the programme sustainable.