Agricultural and socioeconomic effects of vegetation restoration on the Loess Plateau, China

Abstract

Although Vegetation Restoration Programs (VRPs) on the Loess Plateau, China, have significantly improved the region’s ecological condition, their impact on the local economy and agriculture remain unclear. Here we used the difference-in-differences analysis to quantify the effects of the VRPs on population, economic, and agricultural aspects. Results suggest that the implementation of the VRPs increased mean county-based Gross Domestic Product by 148 % and per capita grain production by 30 %, but decreased rural labor resources by 11 %. VRPs promoted the transfer of population to the secondary industry and increased the income of local farmers. We predict that grain production will likely start to decline when the restoration area exceeds approximately 55 % of the total county area in the future. Our study suggests that while VRPs on the Loess Plateau are economically sustainable, their expansion beyond a certain threshold could jeopardize agriculture.

Keywords

Loess Plateau / Vegetation Restoration Programs / Economy / Population / Agriculture

Ethical statement

Ethical approval was not required for this study, as human participants were secured according to local laws and institutional requirements. All aspects of this study were conducted in accordance with the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. Participation in the surveys used in this study was anonymous and voluntary, and consent was obtained from potential respondents prior to participation. Data collected for this research was kept confidential.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Xianlei Fan: Writing – original draft, Visualization, Validation, Software, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Yangjian Zhang: Writing – review & editing. Jing Zhang: Writing – review & editing. Edith Bai: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Resources, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 42325101, 42401060, 42301052), the Science and Technology Development Plan Project of Jilin Province, China (Grant No. 20250601010RC), the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of CPSF (Grant No. GZB20230127), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2412024QD025), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2024M760407), and the Youth Growth Science and Technology Program of Jilin Province (Grant No. 20230508119RC).

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2025.100326.

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