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Journal of Resources and Ecology >

2023 , Vol. 14 >Issue 1: 102 - 113

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5814/j.issn.1674-764x.2023.01.010

Agriculture and Landscape Ecology

Agricultural Heritage Protection and Development Policy from the Perspective of Government Documents

  • HUA Chunlin , 1 ,
  • ZHANG Jiuhong 2 ,
  • ZHANG Canqiang , 3, *
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  • 1. College of Economics and Management, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, Sichuan 621002, China
  • 2. College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100091, China
  • 3. Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Research Center for Rural Economy, Beijing 100810, China
*ZHANG Canqiang, E-mail:

HUA Chunlin, E-mail:

Received date: 2021-02-25

  Accepted date: 2022-02-24

  Online published: 2023-01-31

Supported by

The National Social Science Foundation of China(17CSH012)

The Education Department of Sichuan Province Project(18SA0273)

The Sichuan Agricultural Characteristic Brand Development and Communication Research Center Project(CAB1804)

The China Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA(CARS-45-31)

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Abstract

The active utilization and inheritance of agricultural heritage cannot be separated from the support of relevant government policies. This study combined the bibliometric method and content analysis method to analyze the agricultural heritage protection and development policies based on the government’s 410 agricultural heritage official documents and constructed a six-dimensional analysis framework of document release form, release subject, release quantity, document relevance, document type, and document content. The results show that the form and subject of document release are diversified; the number of documents released has an approximate inverted “U”-type characteristic; the number of documents formulated specifically for agricultural heritage is relatively small (21.46%); and information documents and guidance documents are more favored by the government than incentive documents. The discussion of the document content demonstrates that the excavation and application of agricultural heritage are worthy of further improvement; the economic value is widely used in the multifunctional utilization of agricultural heritage; and farmers, enterprises, scientific research institutions, and governments are all crucial participants in the management of agricultural heritage. Some problems remain in the government’s management of agricultural heritage, such as producing too few targeted documents and the insufficient coverage of the documents that have been produced thus far.

Key words： agricultural heritage; government documents; bibliometric method; content analysis method

Cite this article

HUA Chunlin , ZHANG Jiuhong , ZHANG Canqiang . Agricultural Heritage Protection and Development Policy from the Perspective of Government Documents[J]. Journal of Resources and Ecology, 2023 , 14(1) : 102 -113 . DOI: 10.5814/j.issn.1674-764x.2023.01.010

1 Introduction

Agricultural heritage is an agricultural production system that has been inherited and gradually developed from generation to generation. In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched the “Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems” (GIAHS) project. Although the GIAHS project has been implemented for nearly 20 years, the FAO has not formulated an international protection convention for the management of GIAHS, so voluntary development and voluntary protection within the region are particularly important. In March 2012, the former Ministry of Agriculture of China issued the “Notice on Carrying out the Excavation of China’s Important Agricultural Heritage”, which opened a new stage of China’s agricultural heritage excavation. In August 2015, the former Ministry of Agriculture of China issued the world’s first national-level agricultural heritage management document—“Important Agricultural Heritage Management Measures” (Liu and Xu, 2019)—which aims to strengthen the management of important agricultural heritage and promote the sustainable development of agriculture. Under the guidance of normative documents, the positive effect of agricultural heritage on local economic and social development has gradually become more prominent (Cui et al., 2013). As of July 2021, China had selected 139 important agricultural heritages in six batches (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 2021).
Political decision-making and national governance practices have commonality in functions, consistency in content, and complementarity in application (Pan et al., 2019). The policy integration and policy design of agricultural heritage are the main areas of agricultural heritage protection research (Min, 2020). Domestic and foreign scholars have examined agricultural heritage policy. Some scholars have expounded the necessity of constructing the policy system of agricultural heritage. In the transformation of social and economic development, agricultural heritage is experiencing many objective and subjective challenges and problems, such as the accelerated extinction of heritage, the deterioration of the living environment leading to an inheritance crisis, low awareness of heritage protection, and insufficient excavation of heritage essence (Li, 2015; Zhang and Long, 2020). Additionally, the public welfare, diversity, and long-term nature of agricultural heritage dictate that the protection work is difficult to achieve when solely driven by market interests. Therefore, the government should strengthen top-level planning and design from the vantage point of cultural heritage and ecological protection (Wang, 2016). However, Zhang et al. (2017) conducted an analysis based on statistics in the literature and found that few studies had specifically examined policies and regulations in the field of agricultural heritage protection. Some scholars have analyzed a specific agricultural heritage policy. For example, Qiu et al. (2014) elaborated the protection activities of endangered terraces of the Japanese government and suggested adaptive management strategies for rice terraces under the framework of GIAHS. Liu and Xu (2019) and Yiu et al. (2016) used the “Important Agricultural Heritage Management Measures” as a core policy to analyze and compare the GIAHS management systems of China, Japan, and South Korea. Other scholars have proposed policy suggestions based on the development status of agricultural heritage. For example, Zhao et al. (2012) pointed out that an effective supervision and management mechanism should be established to improve the development capacity of the heritage sites. Yue and Han (2018) discussed the agricultural heritage in the ethnic areas of the Wujiang River Basin and proposed that governments along the river basin should develop a complete set of heritage project procedures. The government should carry out the protection of agricultural heritage in a planned manner in terms of policies, norms, and standards (Sun, 2019). Overall, however, there is still a lack of research that combines qualitative and quantitative methods to systematically explore and analyze the development process of Chinese agricultural heritage policies.
“Document of the Central Government of China on the Guidance of Agriculture, rural areas and farmers work” from 2016 to 2018 and 2020 involve agricultural heritage, indicating that the central government attaches substantial importance to agricultural heritage work. Thus, three key questions are: What are the characteristics of the government documents related to agricultural heritage? What is the content of the documents? What are the deficiencies in the documents? Based on the aforementioned problems and other scholars’ researches, this paper uses bibliometrics and content analysis to assess and summarize the characteristics and content of the policies, and six evaluation units were determined: a document publishing form, a publishing subject, publishing quantity, document relevance, document type, and document content (Lv et al., 2015; Mi and Yang, 2017). Thus, a database of the texts of the Chinese agricultural heritage government documents was constructed to reveal the limitations of the agricultural heritage policy, discuss the possible entry points for improving the policy system, and provide a reference for improving the management of agricultural heritage.

2 Analysis of the characteristics of agricultural heritage documents

This study used “agricultural heritage” as the key word to query the Peking University Law Database. Duplicate documents and documents issued in the form of forwarding were excluded. From 2009 to 2020, there were 410 government documents (106 central documents and 304 local documents) that either mentioned or were formulated specifically for agricultural heritage.

2.1 Analysis of document issue characteristics

2.1.1 Document issue form

Agricultural heritage documents are issued in a variety of forms (Table 1), such as highly authoritative Regulations or Plans, and highly guided Important Points or Guidelines. The numbers of documents issued in the form of an “Opinion” (116) or “Notice” (107) were the largest, accounting for 28.29% and 26.10%, respectively. Different forms of documents differ in their authority, binding, norms, and guidance, and the coordinated use of various forms of documents helps make the policy system more complete.
Table 1 Statistics on the issued forms of Chinese agricultural heritage documents
Form Quantity Proportion (%) Form Quantity Proportion (%)
Opinion 116 28.29 Outline 4 0.98
Notice 107 26.10 Regulation 3 0.73
Reply 54 13.17 Decision 3 0.73
Plan 41 10.00 Report 3 0.73
Program 40 9.76 Stipulate 2 0.49
Important Points 19 4.63 Standardization 1 0.24
Measures 9 2.20 Announcement 1 0.24
Guidelines 6 1.46 Charter 1 0.24

2.1.2 Document issuers

Government agencies or organizations at all levels can independently issue a document, or they can collaborate to jointly issue a document. The issuance of the “Important Agricultural Heritage Management Measures” in 2015 marks a crucial time point, and Fig. 1 reflects the characteristics of the issuers of the 410 agricultural heritage documents. According to the data in Fig. 1, the cooperation between the issuers has strengthened at both the national and local levels. From 2009 to 2014, the retrieved agricultural heritage documents were issued by a single subject. The proportions of documents issued by either a single national department or a single local department were 43.48% and 56.52%, respectively. At the national level, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the largest number of documents, accounting for 90%; while at the local level, the number of documents issued by the provincial or autonomous regional departments of agriculture (animal husbandry) and municipal agricultural bureaus was the largest, accounting for 43.59%, followed by the provincial or municipal people’s government, accounting for 41.03%. From 2015 to 2020, it was common for individual national or local departments to issue documents, accounting for 82.99% of the total. However, many documents were jointly issued by various departments to guide the management of agricultural heritage. For example, the “Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Sustainable Development of Rural Tourism” was jointly issued in 2018 by 17 entities including the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Ministry of Natural Resources, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
Fig. 1 Characteristics of document issuers (a) from 2009 to 2014 and (b) from 2015 to 2020
The issuing agencies or organizations involve many fields, such as agriculture, economics, science and technology, culture, resources, environment, construction, transportation, education, and information. This variety reflects the complexity of the management of agricultural heritage, and it can comprehensively enhance the professionalism of the document formulation of agricultural heritage. However, the responsibilities and tasks of the various issuing subjects must be clearly defined to prevent unclear responsibilities, overlapping work, or mutual prevarication.

2.1.3 Number of documents

Figure 2 shows the distribution of the number of agricultural heritage documents issued in each year. The fluctuation in the number of documents at the local level is the main reason for the fluctuation in the total number of documents. Except for only a few years, the number of documents at the national level is significantly lower than the number of documents at the local level, but the growth trends of the two are approximately the same. To a certain extent, this finding shows that the issuance of national agricultural heritage documents has motivated local governments to formulate agricultural heritage documents.
Fig. 2 Number of documents per year issued on China’s agricultural heritage
The change in the number of documents over time approximates an “inverted U”-shaped fluctuation characteristic. From 2009 to 2011, the number of agricultural heritage documents issued fluctuated at a low level, as the number of all documents in each year ranged from zero to three. The number of agricultural heritage documents issued from 2012 to 2014 increased at a low rate. In 2012, the “Notice on Carrying out the Excavation of China’s Important Agricultural Heritage” stated that a new batch of China’s important agricultural heritage sites would be excavated and identified every two years. Through the excavation and protection of important agricultural heritage, the multiple functions of agricultural heritage have become increasingly prominent, and the brand value has increased. The awareness of the important value of agricultural heritage and the awareness of the entire society regarding protection has been improved. Moreover, the economic and social viability of the heritage sites have been greatly promoted in a sustainable way. The first list of China’s important agricultural heritage sites was announced in 2013, which aroused great attention in China. Thus, governments at all levels began to issue documents to promote the implementation of the excavation of agricultural heritage. As a result, the number of agricultural heritage documents issued increased rapidly from 2015 to 2018 and reached a peak in the number of documents in 2016. The government simultaneously issued the “Important Agricultural Heritage Management Measures”, “Notice on Carrying out the Selection of Global Important Agricultural Heritage Candidate Projects”, “Opinions on Further Strengthening the Protection and Inheritance of Agricultural Culture”, and other documents to promote the excavation and management of agricultural heritage. As a result, 91 important agricultural heritages in China have been identified in four batches from 2013 to 2017, which are filling the gaps in the field of heritage protection and effectively driving the employment and income of farmers in the heritage sites (The Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China, 2017). Following this great effort, the number of documents decreased after 2018. This was because the application procedures for the excavation of agricultural heritage had been preliminarily standardized, and the governments started trying to promote the effective implementation of existing agricultural heritage policies instead of formulating new policies.
Figure 3 shows the regional distribution characteristics of the numbers of China Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (CIAHS) and local government documents. The five provinces with the largest number of important agricultural heritage sites in China are Zhejiang, Sichuan, Yunnan, Hunan, and Jiangsu. At present, there is no important agricultural heritage in the three regions of Shanghai, Tibet, and Qinghai. Regarding the regional distribution, the numbers of documents in Zhejiang, Anhui, and Fujian are relatively large, and the number in Zhejiang has reached 35. In Tibet, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Qinghai, the numbers of agricultural heritage documents are relatively small, at only 0 or 1. As shown in Fig. 3, there is a certain positive correlation between the number of CIAHS and the number of documents in various regions. Provinces with more heritages tend to formulate more government documents to regulate and guide the protection and management of their existing agricultural heritages.
Fig. 3 Regional distribution characteristics of CIAHS and government documents

2.2 Correlation analysis of documents and agricultural heritage

In the database of Chinese agricultural heritage documents, some documents involving agricultural heritage only mention “agricultural heritage” in the text or agricultural heritage is one of the key objects, such as in the “National Agricultural Modernization Plan (2016-2020)”, which stated “strengthening the excavation, protection, inheritance and utilization of important agricultural heritage,” and in the “Notice on Issuing Funds for International Agricultural Communication and Cooperation Projects in 2012”, which listed special funds for the protection of GIAHS. Other documents are specially formulated for agricultural heritage, such as the “Agricultural Heritage Protection and Development Planning Compilation Guidelines (2013)” and the “Huangshan City Mountain Spring Water Fish Farming Industry Development Implementation Plan (2016)”.
There are 322 documents that involve agricultural heritage, accounting for 78.54%, while there are 88 documents specially formulated for agricultural heritage, accounting for 21.46%. The development of agricultural heritage is inseparable from the support of the government. At present, “agricultural heritage” has been written into “Document of the Central Government of China on the Guidance of Agriculture, rural areas and farmers work” and related documents in various fields, for example, rural revitalization, digital rural development, industrial integration, and farmers’ harvest festivals, indicating that the government attaches greater importance to agricultural heritage. Compared with documents that only involve agricultural heritage, documents specially formulated for agricultural heritage are more directional and purposeful, which is conducive to the in-depth improvement of the agricultural heritage protection and management mechanism.

2.3 Analysis of document type

Referencing the research of Zhang and Gao (2014) and Pan et al. (2019), this paper divides the 88 documents specially formulated for agricultural heritage into incentive documents, information documents, and regulation documents based on the government management methods (Table 2). Incentive documents are mainly documents that use financial support methods such as financial appropriations, subsidies, rewards, fines, as well as spiritual incentives such as scientific research declarations and work awards to influence the behavior of the “economic man.” For example, the “Notice on Supporting the Development of Jasmine Bases” of the Fuzhou Municipal Agriculture Bureau provided a subsidy of 1500 yuan for newly planted jasmine bases in 2013. Informational documents are those in which the government publicly states its work content, work progress, and work arrangement to the citizens in the form of an information notice or information reply, such as the “Notice on Carrying out the Excavation of China’s Important Agricultural Heritage” and “Response to Proposal No. 0662 of the Twelfth Session of the Provincial Political Consultative Conference”. Regulation documents, such as the “Kuandian Manchu Autonomous County Important Agricultural Heritage Protection and Management Measures”, represent the use of restraint or guidance by the government to guide the protection or development of agricultural heritage.
The proportions of the three types of documents, namely, incentive, information, and regulation, are 6.82%, 46.59%, and 46.59%, respectively. Incentive documents include the use of financial support means, and often these means must consider issues such as fairness and market compatibility. Therefore, the government may be more cautious in the use of financial incentives. Information documents are one of the more “favored” document types of the government. The government promptly publicizes or announces information on the work of agricultural heritage, which is conducive to enhancing the interactions between governments at all levels and between the government and the masses and promoting an improved combination of policies and practices. Regulation documents account for a relatively high proportion. However, based on the overall perspective of the development of China’s important agricultural heritage, some heritage sites have not issued management rules for important local agricultural heritage, which is not conducive to the sustainable development of agricultural heritage.
Table 2 Types of agricultural heritage documents
Document type Examples
Incentive type Provide funds for the inheritance and development of agricultural heritage; reward individuals or organizations for making outstanding contributions; select social science excellence awards; select outstanding inheritors
Information type Notify the public about the development process and time frames of agricultural heritage work; publicize the agricultural heritage work and the results achieved
Regulation type Restrict breeding density; regulate planting standards; prohibit vandalism; formulate publicity measures

3 Analysis of the content of agricultural heritage documents

Based on the preliminary assessment and summarization of the Chinese agricultural heritage document database, the contents of the documents of Chinese agricultural heritage were divided into the following two parts: the excavation and application of agricultural heritage and the multifunctional utilization of agricultural heritage.

3.1 Excavation and application of agricultural heritage

China has officially assessed 115 important agricultural heritages. As of June 2020, China had 15 GIAHS, accounting for 24.19%, making it the country with the largest number of GIAHS. This number is closely related to China’s increasingly complete identification of agricultural heritage. In 2012, the former Ministry of Agriculture issued the “Notice on Carrying out the Excavation of China’s Important Agricultural Heritage”, which clarified the significance, objectives, and tasks of conducting the excavation of CIAHS, and the heritage declaration procedures for screening by “county-province-central government” level by level were determined, thus starting the declaration and identification work of the first batch of important agricultural heritages in China. Since then, the former Ministry of Agriculture has successively promulgated the “Criteria for Recognition of China’s Important Agricultural Heritage” and “Guidelines for the Compilation of China’s Important Agricultural Heritage Nominations” to standardize the procedures for the application and recognition of agricultural heritage. From 2012 to 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs also promoted the excavation and application of agricultural heritage through the establishment of expert committees, the selection of GIAHS candidate pilots, and the implementation of agricultural heritage surveys. With the coordination and cooperation of agricultural departments at all levels and experts and scholars in the fields of agricultural history and culture, agricultural ecological environment, and agricultural economics, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs identified 408 agricultural production systems with potential protection value in 29 provinces in 2016. The number of projects in Yunnan and Beijing reached 63 and 50, respectively, while the number of projects in Shanghai and Chongqing was zero. Since 2016, two batches of CIAHS applications have identified 56 projects, but only 19 of them were included in the projects announced in the 2016 agricultural heritage survey results.
After five batches of CIAHS were identified and the 2016 census of agricultural heritage, the standardization of the process for the excavation and application of agricultural heritage has been constantly strengthened, and the procedures have been continuously improved. However, the imbalance in the distribution of heritages and the underutilization of census results indicate that the excavation and application of agricultural heritage is worthy of further exploration to a certain extent.

3.2 Multifunctional utilization of agricultural heritage

Agricultural heritage contains rich production experience, traditional farming knowledge systems, and the idea of harmonious development between people and nature; it has potential use value in economics, culture, ecology and other aspects; and its value depends on the current agricultural policy orientation. If agriculture needs to undertake various functions in addition to food and clothing, the value of the heritage will gradually expand, and the policy orientation will determine the size of the heritage functions (Li, 2015). This study assessed a sample of documents specially formulated for agricultural heritage and examined the multifunctional utilization of agricultural heritage from the government documents. The results of a review demonstrate that some documents do not involve the use of agricultural heritage, some documents only discuss “utilizing or exploiting the value of agricultural heritage”, and some documents further describe how to use or exploit the multifunctional value of agricultural heritage. Additionally, 38.64% of the documents involve how to increase agricultural production and efficiency and how farmers can increase employment and income, 31.82% of the documents were related to the inheritance and prosperity of culture; and 30.68% of the documents were related to how the ecosystem service functions of agricultural heritage were realized.
In the multifunctional use of agricultural heritage, economic value is widely used. The government uses agricultural heritage to promote poverty alleviation in poverty-stricken areas or to promote the local economic and social development by three methods.
(1) Agricultural product production and deep processing. Agricultural products are an important agricultural feature of the agricultural heritage system and have important value in ensuring the food security and livelihood security of local residents. For example, due to its mountain springs and flowing water fish farming, Huangshan City was selected as China’s important agricultural heritage for guiding poor households to vigorously develop the mountain springs and flowing water fish farming; Fuzhou Municipal People’s Government promoted the construction of the jasmine industry chain, integrating the extraction and processing of jasmine tea, jasmine essential oil, and tea polyphenols; the “Several Opinions on Improving the Development of the Sericulture Industry” issued by Huzhou Municipal People’s Government mandated increases in the construction of a famous silk brand while strengthening the comprehensive use of sericulture in, for example, food, health products, cosmetics, biological products, edible fungi, and mulberry flooring, to improve the rate of utilization of the sericulture resources, extend the sericulture industry chain, and increase the added value of the industry.
(2) Develop leisure tourism. The development of tourism based on the higher aesthetic value of agricultural heritage and an unique cultural landscape is an important means to promote farmers’ employment and income. Zhongwei City’s “Action Plan for Promoting the Sustainable and Healthy Development of the Wolfberry Industry” stipulated that the model of “industry + culture + tourism” should be adopted to guide Xizan Ecological Wolfberry Manor in creating an A-level tourist attraction and planning the “one-day tour” boutique route for ecological sightseeing of wolfberry. In addition, the management departments of agricultural heritage sites such as the Xinhua Purple Cuckoo Terraces, Shaoxing Torreya Trees, and Huzhou Mulberry Fish Ponds all pointed out that they can rely on agricultural heritage to develop tourism and promote the in-depth integration of their primary, secondary, and tertiary industries.
(3) Creation of other labor positions. Creating labor jobs from the perspectives of, for example, agricultural technology inheritance, agricultural heritage supervision, cultural and creative product sales, environmental packaging, marketing planning and design, and consulting services, maintains the livelihood of farmers or increases the income of residents. Specific examples are the identification of tea masters and terraced field guards and the creation of cultural products (e.g., paper cutting and embroidery) with the characteristics of the heritage sites.
Under the guidance of government agencies and related documents, the economic benefits of agricultural heritage in some areas have gradually emerged. For example, the output of a professional jasmine cooperative planting base in Fujian has increased from 250 kg in the past few years to more than 4000 kg in 2020, with a total annual income of more than 6 million yuan, and the annual sales of tea is more than 2 million yuan. While increasing the income, the employment problems of more than 100 villagers in the village were solved (Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Fujian Province, 2020).
From the perspective of cultural value, the ideological concepts, humanistic spirit, and ethics contained in the excellent farming culture increase the cohesiveness and education of the people. Combining festival activities, exhibitions, education and training, mass media, and other means to promote the cultural value of agricultural heritage is conducive to creating a good atmosphere for the protection of agricultural heritage. For example, “A Concise Knowledge Reader of Rice Cultivation Culture—A View on Rice Cultivation Culture”, published by Wannian County, Jiangxi Province, extracts the essence of rice culture from the perspectives of agricultural sites, agricultural technology, agricultural species, and agricultural folk customs; and the “Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Development of the Chinese Medicinal Material Industry” of the People’s Government of Shizhu County requires strengthening the propaganda of Chinese medicine health care culture, deeply exploring the “bitter” culture of Coptis chinensis, and inviting well-known experts to promote the health effects of the main varieties of local Chinese medicinal materials. Some regions have also built cultural centers and museums based on local agricultural heritage and conducted activities which bring farming culture into the campus.
The ecological function is mainly reflected in the maintenance of the ecological resources of the heritage site and the construction of new ecosystems. For example, “Interim Measures for the Management of Agricultural Heritage in the Hainan Haikou Yangshan Litchi Planting System” states that commercial operations must not damage the local ecological environment, agricultural resources, or heritage inheritance. The People’s Government of Shaoxing City in Zhejiang requires the use of the characteristic resource advantages of the Kuaiji Mountain Ancient Fragrant torreya group, an important global agricultural heritage, to optimize the allocation of inefficient forests through technical measures such as construction, nurturing, and replanting; thus, the ecological functions of the forests, such as water and soil protection, air purification, environmental beautification, and biodiversity, will significantly improve.

4 Perspective of multi-stakeholder participation in agricultural heritage management from documents

Governments, enterprises, scientific research institutions, farmers, and other entities occupy different positions in the excavation and protection of agricultural heritage. They have different roles and jointly maintain the sustainable development of agricultural heritage (Fig. 4). At the macro level, the government fully uses its economic, cultural, and service functions to provide an institutional guarantee for the sustainable development of agricultural heritage. Scientific research institutions and enterprises should play their respective roles of scientific and technological support and operation management at the intermediate level and further promote the scientific management of agricultural heritage through industry-university-research cooperation. Farmers directly participate in the construction of sustainable development of agricultural heritage at the micro level. All parties cooperate to form a complete agricultural heritage management chain from the perspective of system management. This study further analyzes the characteristics of multi- stakeholder participation in the management of agricultural heritage based on the analysis of government documents.
Fig. 4 Multi-stakeholder participation in the management of agricultural heritage

4.1 Government participation

4.1.1 The use of policy measures to enrich the management of agricultural heritage

Policy measures enable the achievement of policy goals. To promote the protection of agricultural heritage during excavation and inheritance as well as during use, the government has implemented a series of policy measures. Generally, the methods and measures used by the government to achieve established goals when formulating and implementing policies are divided into three main categories: the laws and regulations which are the forms of non-market-based direct intervention methods; the measures of changing market signals which may adjust profit motives; and the indirect measures of using information dissemination to guide individual decision-making changes (Murphy et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2013). Therefore, this paper uses the mandatory punishment, capital investment, and international exchanges and cooperation as examples to analyze the orderly development of government policies in the management of agricultural cultural heritage.
A review found that some government documents clarified the punishment methods for heritage destruction in the form of warnings or fines. For example, the “Provisions on the Protection of Jasmine Tea of Fuzhou City” pointed out that for the use of highly toxic and high-residue pesticides in the process of jasmine planting, a warning shall be given by the agricultural administrative department and a fine imposed of not less than 3000 yuan but not more than 30000 yuan. In the specific practice process, strengthening the supervision and management of agricultural heritage are necessary to ensure that disciplinary measures play their substantive role. Some government documents refer to the use capital investment to manage agricultural heritage. Such capital investments include government agricultural ecological compensation, agricultural product production subsidies, infrastructure construction investment, protection management and promotion fund investments, individual awards, and tax reductions and exemptions for related enterprises, but the national and local financial support of agricultural heritage remains insufficient. At present, agricultural heritage has not received special funding support from the central government, and local funding for agricultural heritage is also very limited.
Internationally, China is a powerful promoter of cooperation in agricultural heritage. From the “Notice on Distributing Funds for International Agricultural Communication and Cooperation Projects”, and “Response to Recommendation No. 8584 of the Fifth Session of the Twelfth National People’s Congress”, we can summarize the key facts. In 2012, China had a leading role in its work with South Korea, Japan, and other countries in establishing the “East Asia Regional Agricultural Heritage Research Association”. In the same year, the Agricultural International and Cooperation Project provided support funds of 200000 yuan for projects for the protection of GIAHS, which were used to hold FAO seminars on the protection of GIAHS and conduct the planning of GIAHS. In 2015, this value changed to no more than 500000 yuan for a single item. In 2017, the Ministry of Agriculture participated in the European and Central Asian Regional Work Seminar on GIAHS hosted by the FAO, sharing China’s experience in agricultural heritage management, and from the perspectives of the “Belt and Road Initiative” countries and South-South cooperation, suggestions on agricultural heritage cooperation were made to the FAO. At present, China is in a relatively leading position in the management of GIAHS. In the future, China must continue to improve its agricultural heritage policy system and use the construction experience of the policy system to promote and assist the FAO in establishing and improving the agricultural heritage management system.

4.1.2 The use of government cooperation to improve the efficiency of agricultural heritage management

The cooperation between the government and its various departments is a favorable driver for improving the efficiency of agricultural heritage management and promoting the development of agricultural heritage. Using the interpretation of document characteristics and document content, this article divides government cooperation into vertical cooperation and horizontal cooperation. Vertical cooperation is the cooperation between the “central-province-city” levels, and horizontal cooperation is cooperation between various departments at the same level and government cooperation across administrative regions.
In the system design and work guidance, the government at the national level focuses on the guiding and procedural issues of agricultural heritage management, while the government at the local level focuses on the implementation of policies and strengthening the management of agricultural heritage according to local conditions. For example, in 2015, the former Ministry of Agriculture issued the “Administrative Measures for Important agricultural heritage,” stating that “the development and utilization of important agricultural heritage should meet the requirements of heritage protection and development planning, and be in harmony with the heritage’s historical, cultural, landscape and ecological attributes.” Under the guidance of this approach, some local governments issued a series of documents on local agricultural heritage. For example, the “Opinions on Promoting the Inheritance and Development of Torreya Industry” issued by Shaoxing, Zhejiang, pointed out that it is necessary to speed up the legislative process for the protection and management of the ancient torreya group in Kuaiji Mountain, Shaoxing; improve the “Management Measures for the Protection and Management of the Kuaiji Mountain Torreya Group in Shaoxing”; formulate the “The Management and Use Measures for the Signs of the Ancient Fragrant Torreya Group in the GIAHS”; and prepare the “Guaiji Mountain Ancient Fragrant Torreya Group Protection and Development Plan (2016-2025)”. For some agricultural heritages, no corresponding government documents have been identified in the database. In practice, some agricultural heritages have been fully used, while some agricultural heritages focus on “taking the brand” and ignore their multifunctional use value. In addition, the repeated cooperation between the central and local governments reflects the spiraling process of agricultural heritage management. The documents issued by the central government have a guiding role in the formulation of local agricultural heritage documents, and the government documents guide practice and produce certain practical effects. The government with jurisdiction over where the important agricultural heritage is located needs to provide feedback to the higher-level government and submit an annual report on the heritage protection work to the Ministry of Agriculture before the end of each year, which reports on that year’s heritage protection work and the work plan for the next year. Therefore, the problems identified in the prior round of practice will make the formulation of the next round of documents more complete.
Horizontal cooperation between departments at the same level is mainly reflected in the departments performing their duties, using their functional advantages, and coordinating the completion of agricultural heritage related work. For example, the “Taizhou Duotian (field) Protection Regulations” stipulated that the agricultural and rural authorities and the natural resources and planning departments should organize daily inspections of the field protection; water conservancy departments should monitor the siltation and soil conservation of the field waters; cultural, radio, television, and tourism departments should cultivate the field tourism brand; and the education department should organize primary and secondary schools to conduct teaching and labor practices related to the field. However, in the management of agricultural heritage, overlaps are inevitable in the work between various departments. Therefore, strengthening effective communication between various departments can improve the orderly implementation of agricultural heritage management.
In the global or Chinese important agricultural heritage projects, the administrative regions involved in heritage projects, such as rice terraces in southern China, the Yanchitan sheep breeding system in Ningxia, and the lychee planting system in Guangdong, typically span multiple provinces and cities (or districts and counties). In this type of agricultural heritage management, cross-regional government cooperation further promotes the overall development of the agricultural production system. The document “Implementation Opinions of the Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan and Yellow River Golden Triangle Cooperation Work” points out that it is necessary to explore and protect agricultural heritage and build an internationally influential Yellow River cultural ecological agricultural leisure belt. The assessment of the retrieved government documents demonstrated that few documents involve horizontal cooperation between regional governments; thus, the policy system could be improved in this regard.

4.2 Participation of other subjects

4.2.1 Farmers

Farmers are direct participants in the protection and use of agricultural heritage. From the perspective of government documents, farmers mainly share the economic benefits of agricultural heritage as the producers of agricultural products and developers of leisure farms while promoting the sustainable development of agricultural heritage. For example, the “Huangshan Mountain Spring Water Fish Farming Industry Development Implementation Plan” guides farmers to develop aquaculture in front of the court and behind the house, advocates symbiotic aquaculture methods such as “fish- river snail”, and encourages the development of three-dimensional farming and aquaculture modes such as “fish-fruit”, all of which increase incomes and ensure the water quality. The production and lives of farmers in heritage sites are closely related to the protection and development of agricultural heritage. In the policy system design, the government should also improve farmers’ understanding and awareness of the protection of agricultural heritage and give farmers the right to supervise and report, thus forming an effective “bottom-up” supervision mechanism, and promoting the dynamic protection and coordinated development of agricultural heritage in a good social atmosphere.

4.2.2 Enterprises

Enterprises can provide financial support for the management of agricultural heritage through donations or funding from the perspective of a third party. The document “Guidelines for the Preparation of Agricultural Heritage Protection and Development Planning” points out that corporate funding and donations are important financing channels. Enterprises can also participate in the production of agricultural products from the perspective of stakeholders, promote agricultural culture, and assume the role of the main subject of interest connections. In the production process of agricultural products, enterprises can play their role in all three stages—before, during, and after the event—to promote employment and income while promoting the sustainable development of agricultural heritage.
Two examples are stipulated in the “Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Jasmine Tea Industry” and “Fuzhou Jasmine Tea Protection Regulations”. For example, before jasmine planting and production, the jasmine production and operation enterprises must strictly implement source control and strengthen the supervision of agricultural inputs; subsequently, the infrastructure of the jasmine planting base can be constructed and transformed based on a scientific layout; in the process of jasmine planting, enterprises must promote the ecological planting and deep processing of jasmine; and after the jasmine is produced, regular inspections and irregular random inspections must be conducted to ensure the quality and safety of the tea.
Enterprises also play a critical role in the promotion of agricultural culture. Examples include holding various forms of colorful exhibitions and festivals; participating in various domestic and foreign expos and promotional meetings; applying for representative heritage inheritance units; and building cultural and creative industrial parks. The enterprise is also the main linking subject of the interests of the government, scientific research institutions, farmers, and other parties, which is conducive to adhering to the principle of “multi-party participation and benefit sharing”, forming a long-term cooperation mechanism and improving the agricultural heritage management system. For example, “Several Opinions on Improving the Development of the Sericulture Industry” issued by Huzhou Municipal People’s Government supports the adoption of production and operation models such as “company + cooperative” and “company + base + farmer” by enterprises and the establishment of close relationships with sericulture farmers in the form of orders, land shares, and the establishment of cooperatives. As a community of interests, enterprises establish local standards for the quality of silkworm cocoons by unifying technology, varieties, and equipment. On the basis of market pricing, they implement the unified harvesting and drying of silkworm cocoons and provide rebates according to the quality and benefits of the cocoon silk.

4.2.3 Research institutions

The management of agricultural heritage involves multiple disciplines and a wide range of knowledge. This interdisciplinary research field integrates the social sciences and natural sciences. The agricultural heritage management work involving scientific research institutions can be divided into three parts. The first part is personnel training and the establishment of an interdisciplinary expert committee to provide consulting and decision-making support for the protection and management of agricultural heritage. The second part discusses the development status and utilization prospects of agricultural heritage from the perspective of social science research. For example, “Jiangsu Agricultural Heritage Survey and Research”, published on the basis of related projects of the Jiangsu Education Department, systematically introduces the resources of agricultural heritage in Jiangsu Province. The third part is conducting technical research on the production and processing of related agricultural products in the heritage site.
For example, Huangshan City’s “Mountain Spring Water Fish Farming Industry Development Implementation Plan” requires a combination of “production, learning, and research” in order to cooperate with Ocean University of China and Anhui Agricultural University in a new variety of research and development, new breeding technology, environmental carrying capacity, new fish packaging, transportation, and product deep processing technology; the local government of Yunnan Province supports scientific research institutions in conducting the in-depth research on the regional characteristics of the Hani terraces “Red rice + Rice loach (carp, etc.)” and other multi-level ecosystems, screening the most suitable breeding varieties and optimal breeding models for integrated rice-fish cultivation in terraced fields, and refining the standard operating procedures.

5 Conclusions and suggestions

5.1 Conclusions

This research used a bibliometric method and a content analysis method to assess 410 government documents related to agricultural heritage and generated three main findings.
(1) The forms and subjects of document publications show diversified characteristics. The number of documents issued in the form of “opinions” and “notices” is the largest; and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, local agricultural (livestock) departments, and local agricultural bureaus are the core document issuing entities. The documents specially formulated for agricultural heritage accounted for a relatively small proportion (21.46%). The number of documents issued has an approximately “inverted U-shaped” change feature, and there is a certain positive correlation between the number of China’s important agricultural heritages and the number of documents in various regions. Agricultural heritage documents can be divided into three types: incentive, information, and regulation. Information documents and regulation documents are more “favored” by the government than incentive documents.
(2) The standardization of the excavation and application of agricultural heritage has been continuously strengthened, and the procedures have been continuously improved. However, some problems remain in the heritage evaluation results announced by the government, such as unbalanced heritage distribution and underutilization of census results. In the multifunctional utilization of agricultural heritage, economic value is widely used. As an agricultural production system, the development and utilization of its economic, cultural, and ecological functions deserve further exploration.
(3) The government, farmers, enterprises, and scientific research institutions are all important participants in the management of agricultural heritage. The coordination and cooperation of various entities using their own characteristics and advantages are conducive to enhancing the system of agricultural heritage management. However, problems remain at the national and local levels, such as limited cross-regional government cooperation, lack of management documents, insufficient coverage of document content, and insufficient capital investment.

5.2 Suggestions

Based on the analysis and discussion of government documents on agricultural heritage, several suggestions and countermeasures are given.
(1) The increase of the number of agricultural heritage documents reflects the government’s increased emphasis on agricultural heritage. The government can further use agricultural heritage in areas such as rural revitalization, poverty alleviation, and industrial integration to make agricultural heritage live”. However, due to problems such as policy overlap and decentralization, the introduction of too many policies might not promote the active, orderly development of agricultural heritage. Some local governments should strengthen the efficient integration of agricultural heritage policies so that various documents can receive full attention and efficient implementation, promoting the coordinated development of the quantity and quality of documents. However, some important agricultural heritage sites have not issued targeted management measures or management regulations to guide the management of their local agricultural heritage. In addition to their heterogeneity, agricultural heritage sites have heterogeneity in the environment, so the excavation, protection, and development efforts are unique. Governments with jurisdiction over heritage sites must design agricultural heritage protection and development policies based on local conditions and improve the coordination of incentives, information, and regulation of the government documents.
(2) Encourage some areas to apply agricultural heritage excavation, improve the balance of heritage distribution, and enable the potential local agricultural heritage resources to be better protected and developed. For the 408 agricultural production systems in the census of agricultural heritage, reasonable development and utilization are also necessary. In addition, agricultural heritage is a system, so its function requires the entire system to remain intact. Abandoning other functions or the one-sided industrialization of a function will destroy the stability and sustainability of the heritage system (Zhang and Shen, 2016). In documents related to agricultural heritage, the government should simultaneously consider the multiple functions of the heritage, promote it from the level of “playing” functions to the level of “how to play” functions, further provide clear and operable guidance, strengthen the assessment of relevant responsibility units, and try to prevent the documents from becoming mere formalities so that the multifunctional value of agricultural heritage can be more comprehensively and fully used.
(3) Explore an effective interest linkage mechanism among farmers, enterprises, scientific research institutions, and the government, and stimulate the enthusiasm of all subjects to participate in agricultural heritage. Raise the level of scientific understanding of agricultural heritage among heritage residents. Further promote industry-university-research cooperation in the field of agricultural heritage between enterprises and scientific research institutions. Strengthen vertical cooperation between central and local governments, and horizontal cooperation between departments at the same level, and cross-regional governments. In the text of government documents, it is necessary to clarify the responsibilities and tasks of each subject, avoid duplication of work or prevarication, and increase the frequency and effectiveness of intergovernmental communications. Governments at all levels must increase the financial support for agricultural heritage and can include CIAHS in the scope of centralized special funding support. Drawing on the government’s planning guidance for traditional villages and leisure agriculture, documents such as the “Warning and Exit Regulations on China’s Important Agricultural Heritage” and “Guiding Opinions on the Protection and Development of Agricultural Heritage” can be formulated to further improve the policy framework system of China’s agricultural heritage, encourage local governments to make rational use of important local agricultural heritage, and achieve a win-win scenario between heritage protection and the economic and social development of heritage sites.

Acknowledgment

This work was also supported by the Fishery Economy and Fishery Culture of RCRE Innovation Team Project.

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