Evaluation of Tree-planting activities in China
July 2009

Akiko and I spent two weeks in July, checking how trees had survived following our tree planting activities in October 2008 and April 2009. First, we went to Yulin, Shaanxi Province to have discussions with the Seabuckthorn Association officials and also with Mr. and Mrs. Fan Junpo of the International Seabuckthorn Development and Research Center, Beijing, who had kindly agreed to meet us in Yulin. Through the courtesy of these people, we could inspect a Seabuckthorn fruits processing factory in Inner Mongolia and also some of their planting sites.

The visit to the factory, some two hours' drive from Yulin, turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The factory was modern and clean, unlike any other ones we had seen in China before. It was agreed that the Seabuckthorn fruits to be harvested by the farmers participating in the 2050 project would be bought up by the factory. This was a piece of great news to the farmers, as they will be assured of income in future.

Regarding our tree-planting activities in the Loess Plateau, we could witness from our observation that planting should first be done in gullies so that erosion may be prevented. The survival rate of seedlings, we could observe to our relief, was around 70% despite a long spell of drought. The farmers will replace dead seedlings in October prior to their tree-planting activities scheduled for the end of October.

Prof. Sun Ruohuai will follow up these activities at all times.

We visited the Tongwei County site, Ganasu Province from 27th through 30th October. Upon arrival in Lanzhou, we inspected the Zhongchuan Nursery where 3 million seedlings were being raised. Here, we met a group of Chinese student volunteers, camping and raising seedlings for our project. They call themselves "Raleigh Chinese Development Program". We learned that this movement, established by the Prince of Wales, had college students from 17 Provinces to help poor communities and to restore nature. We were impressed by the students who promised continued cooperation with us.

From our inspection of various sites, it was obvious that Tongwei was also suffering from a long period of drought but the survival rate was excellent around 85-95 %, except in one area where it was around 75 %. We conducted two separate discussions with the farmers engaged in tree-planting activities for our project. After the discussions with us and appropriate explanations offered by the County leaders, the farmers now understand the purpose of our tree-planting activities very clearly and the prospect of their activities resulting in cash income in the future. Accordingly, everyone is now happy and positive about the on-going tree-planting activities.

The government officials concerned with the tree-planting activities now realize the importance of our project and would like to expand it, with a possible larger amount of support from Japan. We had a meeting in this respect with the officials of the Provincial government on our last day in Gansu. Following very frank discussions, it was agreed that all practical steps should be pursued, rather than praises, to make the project successful, particularly to support the nursery operations run by Mr. Su Benshan. We believe that the Chinese people will now show more of their "self-help spirit", rather than just depending on the support from Japan. The Chinese side decided that they would send two officials to Japan at the beginning of September for a 10 day visit to have discussions with all the sponsors and to see some juice manufacturing plants in preparation for the construction of a Seabuckthorn processing plant of their own in Gansu.

All in all, we returned to Japan, convinced that our Greening of the Silk Road Project will succeed.