Could the Sloping Land Conversion Program Promote Farmers’ Income in Rocky Desertification Areas?—Evidence from China

Rong Zhao, Tianyu Jia and He Li ()
Additional contact information
Rong Zhao: Research Institute of Forestry Policy and Information, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing 100091, China
Tianyu Jia: Research Institute of Forestry Policy and Information, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing 100091, China
He Li: Research Institute of Forestry Policy and Information, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing 100091, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 12, 1-15

Abstract: The Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) is a significant measure to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations in 2015. SLCP plays an important role in poverty alleviation and income increase for farmers in poor areas. The purpose of this study is to analyze whether the income of farmers has increased after participating in SLCP, and whether SLCP has released the agricultural labor force to obtain non-agricultural income by participating in non-agricultural work. Based on the field investigation in Luocheng County and Longsheng County of Guangxi, Libo County, and Dushan county of Guizhou, this paper uses the method of propensity score matching (PSM) to explore the impact of SLCP on the income of farmers in rocky desertification areas. According to our research, it is found that: (1) SLCP has a positive effect of 5.2% on the average annual net income of farmers, a positive effect of 43.2% on agricultural income, and a negative effect of 9.8% on non-agricultural income, but all of the effects are insignificant. Selective deviation will overestimate the impact of SLCP on farmers’ total income and agricultural income and underestimate the impact on non-agricultural income. SLCP failed to promote the transformation of farmers into secondary and tertiary industries. The mechanism of SLCP to increase farmers’ income is complex. (2) Farmers’ participation in SLCP is influenced by work experience and education level in human capital, participation in skills training in social capital, and owning durable consumer goods in physical capital. Although SLCP will promote economic development under the condition of improving the ecological environment in the future, it is not advisable to exchange farmers’ livelihood for ecological construction at present. The implementation of SLCP should consider not only the overall ecological benefits, but also the short-term social and economic benefits.

Keywords: Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP); rocky desertification area; farmers; propensity score matching (PSM) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/12/9295/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/12/9295/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:12:p:9295-:d:1166801

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().