Jiangyan district forest farm, Taizhou City, Jiangsu Province

a forest farm

Forest farms are generally divided into state-owned forest farms and private forest farms. It refers to the units engaged in cultivation, management and forest cutting.

Forest farm types

Due to the fragile forestry ecology, long economic benefit cycle, unique public welfare status, long-term policy marginalization and low national investment, the development of circular forest industry started late. In recent years, the vast majority of forest farms are facing a serious survival crisis, and the development of forest farms is almost stagnant. Most of the forest farms are still in the state of survival and development in the 1980s, and most of them are state-owned.

Private forest farm

Private forest farm refers to a kind of private owned forest farm, which is a non-public form of enterprise. It is engaged in production and operation activities for the purpose of making profits, while achieving the maximization of self economic benefits, accepting the leadership of the forestry department to shoulder certain ecological tasks.

State owned Forest Farm

The state-owned forest farm refers to the state-owned forestry productive institutions that cultivate and protect forest resources. It was called the state-owned forest farm before the 1990s. All means of production and products such as forest land and trees in state-owned forest farms are state property. In order to accelerate the cultivation of forest resources, protect and improve the ecology, the state-owned forest farms in China were established by the way of state investment in key ecologically fragile areas and large areas of concentrated and contiguous state-owned barren hills and wasteland in the early days of the founding of new China. They are specialized in afforestation and forest management and protection. After more than 50 years of construction, the total number of state-owned forest farms in China has reached 4507, distributed in more than 1600 counties (cities, banners, districts) of 31 provinces (districts, cities). At present, there are 660000 employees. The total operating area is 930 million mu, including 750 million mu of forest land, 600 million mu of forest area and 2.2 billion cubic meters of forest stock, accounting for 18%, 23% and 17% of the national forest land area, forest area and forest stock respectively.

Main tasks

Expand forest resources, improve forest quality, give full play to the production potential of state-owned forest land, and improve ecological, social and economic benefits; state owned forest farms are the basic organizations in China's forest areas. At the same time, they also undertake the tasks of education, health, public security and social management in forest areas, and some take charge of villages. the characteristic of state-owned forest farms is that they intersect with rural areas, generally across villages and counties, and some large-scale forest farms cross cities, which is difficult to manage. there are many names for state-owned forest farms, such as forestry bureau, forest management office, sand control station, etc. state owned forest farms are divided into timber forest farms, shelter forest farms, economic forest farms, scenic forest farms, etc. According to the budget system, it can be divided into ecological forest farms and commercial forest farms. According to the management system, provincial forest farms account for 10%, prefecture (city) forest farms account for 15%, and county forest farms account for 75%.

Functions and disadvantages

It has played an important backbone, demonstration and leading role in China's forestry development, especially in forest cultivation and protection, which has been recognized by the society. However, in the long-term development process, state-owned forest farms have accumulated many difficulties and problems, such as economic crisis, workers' living difficulties, serious lag of infrastructure construction, lack of development potential, etc The reform of state-owned forest farms is imminent.