Contribution of Forestry to Poverty Alleviation - APFNet

development and protection through afforestation subsidy, improving species quality, thinning and
tending middle and young age groups of forest, wetlands protection, compensating the damages caused
by wild animals through forest insurance, forestry finance and taxation aid system, improving the
harvest system, and establishing a forestry social service system. All these aim to provide farmers
a forestry development platform and policy guarantee to increase farmers’ employment and income,
contributing to poverty alleviation.
Recommendations
To further promote the role of forestry in poverty reduction, we recommend the following
suggestions.
Speed Up the Infrastructure Construction in Forestry Areas
Infrastructure is critical in improving rural production and living conditions, develop the rural
economy, and increase farmers’ income. Government should further invest in the construction of
roads, electricity provision, and water conservation through CFTR to improve production and living
conditions in rural areas.
Increase Science and Technical Inputs
Science-technology popularization and application should be one of the leading strategies to poverty
relief. The government’s public service function of introducing, popularizing and demonstrating
forestry techniques should be fully used to assist farmers. Forestry professionals and technicians should
be trained regularly and encouraged to actively provide technical services in poor rural areas. Policies
must encourage government and non-government science and technology research institutes, and rural
cooperation organizations to participate in projects towards poverty alleviation.
Encourage the Industrialization of Forestry
Industrialization of forestry is key in promoting forestry development and assist in increasing farmers’
income. Forestry products with high value potential and its markets should be industrialized to form
a regional leading specialty industry in a relatively large-scale area to enhance the added value of
forestry products. Large- and middle-scale processing industries of forestry products with large
market shares could be encouraged to source their raw materials from poor rural areas. This can
provide services and markets for poor farmers before and after production and form a systematic
industrialization management of the forest resource, production, and trade. Scaled-up and professional
wholesale markets for forestry products from poor rural areas are then set up to further assist farmers’
incomes through forestry.
Strengthen Forestry Cooperation Organizations
Forestry cooperation organizations (FCOs) are non-government organizations self-organized by farmers
to ensure their rights. But FCOs have limited management capacity and few experiences. Government
should help develop and strengthen FCOs through policies enabling FCO involvement in afforestation,
science-technology popularization, financing, forest insurance, and information. Cooperation between
farmers and forestry processing industries should be encouraged at different levels to enlarge the
scale of forestry production, effectively decrease production costs, have free-flowing information and
production plan, to enhance market competitiveness of local farmers and increase their incomes.
Further Improve the Forestry Financing System
A well-developed forestry financing system guarantees the capital from forest production and its
expansion in rural areas. Due to the relatively high costs of forestry production, farmers do not have
95