Impacts of grassland ecological compensation on households in China

In order to restore and protect the grassland ecological environment which had been degraded, China government has carried out extensive grassland ecological compensation system which including grazing restrictions, returning cropland to forestry and grass, rewards and compensation of grassland ecology protection, and so on. The degraded grassland has recovered and the height, coverage and hay yield of grassland has been improved after over ten years of grassland ecological compensation system application. The present paper summarized the impacts of grassland ecological compensation on farmers and herders as household is the fundamental unit of ecological compensation and their responses were closely related to the persistence of ecological compensation. The results showed that grassland ecological compensation had a positive impact on household income and agricultural structure. However, the experience was still in the immature stage. Grassland ecological compensation had following questions including unreasonable compensation period and rewards standard; outdate livestock production model and large funding gap; high risk of pen feeding; difficulty of surplus labor force shift; and lack of technical compensation. Following suggestions were proposed based on the above problems: establishing reasonable standards, broadening financing channels; improving the social security system, developing intensive animal husbandry, adding technical offset, and extending period of subsidy and developing follow-up industry.