Mushrooms traditionally collected from forests and now more cultivated have recently become the products of the fifth-largest agricultural sector in China. It was estimated that more than 25 million farmers in China are currently engaged in the collection, cultivation processing and marketing of mushrooms. The total value of mushroom products amounted to 149 billion RMB Yuan (24 billion USD) in 2011. The raw materials have expanded from a few hardwoods to a variety of woods and increasing more into agricultural residues and wastes. The average annual growth rate has been over 10% over the past 30 years in China. This paper describes the rapid growth of mushroom cultivation and its contribution to food security and rural sustainable development. The roles of bio-innovation, technological dissemination, and marketing are also examined. Mushrooms could potentially be very important in future food supplies and in new dimensions of sustainable agriculture and forestry.

China has been implementing one of the world's largest ecological rehabilitation projects, the Natural Forest Protection Program (NFPP), to improve its fragile and precarious environmental conditions. This paper measures the socioeconomic impacts of the NFPP using input–output (I–O) models. We find that the NFPP will expand the annual output of the forest sectors by 5.8 billion Yuan and the whole economy by 8.9 billion Yuan by 2010. Employment will increase by 0.84 million in the forest sectors and by 0.93 million in the whole economy. Associated with the enormous expansion of forest protection and management are huge contributions to mitigating water runoff, soil erosion, flooding, and biodiversity loss. The investments and adjustments are thus worthwhile, if the program is properly implemented. The challenges are to transform loggers into tree planters and forest managers and to ensure that the financial and institutional commitments by the local and national governments will be materialized.

This study aimed to promote the reasonable pricing of forest carbon sinks and the development of the carbon market. In this study, we utilized four carbon emission-intensive enterprises in the thermal power, steel and chemical industries in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong, and Hubei provinces. Based on the marginal carbon emission reduction costs of the sample enterprises, the Rubinstein game model was used to calculate the demand price of forest carbon sinks of the sample enterprises; moreover, the cloud model was used to simulate the impact of policy changes on them. This showed that the demand price of forest carbon sinks for enterprises in different regions and industries is different and there are great differences under different policy scenarios. Notably, the proportion of carbon offset allowed by the government and the amount of carbon subsidies have a positive impact on the demand price of forest carbon sinks; contrastingly, the rate of carbon tax collection has a negative impact. Among them, the allowable offset ratio significantly influences it. We suggest adopting differentiated emission reduction policies, increasing the proportion of forest carbon sequestration offset, and transitioning from a single policy to a diversified comprehensive policy.