China has so far turned a total of some 13.4 million hectares of hillside farmland into forest, the latest survey from the State Forestry Administration showed.

The project of turning farmland into forest covers 25 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in China and over 90 percent of the forest created in the project has been protected well.

In the past five years, the Chinese government has allocated 23.6 billion yuan (US$3 billion) to the project, of which 16.8 billion yuan was used as compensation for farmers. Statistics show 60 million rural families have benefited from it.

Bai Zhanfu, a farmer in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, said his yearly income has jumped nine times from 1999, when his family turned 1.3 ha of farmland into woods. The income increase came from the intensive cultivation of the remaining farmland, plus the compensation from the government, he said.

The project of turning hillside farmland into forest started in 1999 in a bid to facilitate the country's afforestation campaign. The government offered funds for saplings and compensation for farmers contributing farmland to the project.

Aiming to solve the problem of land erosion, the project, one of the major afforestation projects in China, covers all the western, central and some eastern provinces in China.

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