Coal and Straw-Burning Bans: Why Farmers Are Always Subjected to a One-Size-Fits-All Approach

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I. Nine Years: Change and Continuity

On 5 January 2026, upon reading a report in the Farmers Daily titled “Hebei’s Rural Heating Crisis Must Not Be Delayed Further”, I felt a sudden jolt, as if abruptly transported back nine years.

◉ The report, published on the day of Minor Cold, was taken down a day later.
I am from Hebei. 2016 was the first freezing winter many of my fellow villagers endured without coal or gas. A few years earlier, Beijing’s smog had become a global environmental flashpoint. The central government responded with a stringent crackdown on pollution, issuing the ‘Ten Measures for Air Pollution Prevention and Control’ in 2013. This policy took a multi-pronged approach to curb airborne pollutant emissions across industry, transport, and agriculture. Concurrently, expert source-apportionment studies revealed that Beijing’s smog was not entirely self-generated; neighbouring provinces made a significant contribution, particularly Hebei, a major industrial powerhouse. In autumn and winter, loose coal burned by rural households for heating was identified as one of the main drivers of smog across North China. The ‘Ten Measures’ therefore included a specific directive: to boost natural gas allocations for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and to replace industrial and residential loose coal in the atmospheric transmission corridors around Beijing with gas or electricity.

Hebei subsequently rolled out large-scale coal-to-gas and coal-to-electricity programmes. The push temporarily strained natural gas supplies, creating the absurd predicament where farmers were prohibited from burning coal yet had no gas available. 2016 was a stark example. By the winter of 2017—the concluding year of the ‘Ten Measures’—conditions deteriorated further. In late November, Hebei issued an orange alert for natural gas. Facing a provincial supply gap of 10 to 20 per cent, several cities had no choice but to suspend gas supplies for industrial enterprises and vehicle refuelling.

My family home sits on the outskirts of a county town in southern Hebei, in a typical peri-urban fringe. That year, our domestic gas supply was cut too, leaving my mother to stew our meals on an induction hob. At least, urban central heating remained uninterrupted. Relatives still living in our ancestral village were not so fortunate. Denied both natural gas and coal, they too resorted to induction cooking, while winter warmth relied entirely on portable infrared heaters and electric blankets.

I have a particular stake in these issues because, in the years following the ‘Ten Measures’, I worked as an environmental journalist. I witnessed firsthand what felt like a golden age of pollution control. Stringent environmental policies were issued in rapid succession; ecological inspection teams moved with swift, decisive authority; environmental NGOs exposed illegal dischargers one after another and launched a string of compelling public interest lawsuits; and scholars produced volumes of research on source apportionment, health impacts, and the very mechanics of pollution governance. I genuinely believed that with such forceful government intervention, coupled with the intense scrutiny from the media, NGOs, and the public, properly resolving the winter heating crisis for North China’s farmers would surely take no more than two or three years.

Yet, nearly a decade on, the headlines have barely needed updating. If there is one change, it is this: articles are deleted faster than ever. On the day of Minor Cold, China Farmers’ Daily published a piece amplifying the voices of Hebei’s farmers. By the following day, it had been scrubbed from the entire Chinese internet.

This is precisely why, upon seeing Beijing’s gleaming ‘blue skies report card’ released around the same time—announcing that PM2.5 levels had fallen from 89.5 micrograms per cubic metre in 2013 to 27 in 2025, with multiple indicators reaching their best levels on record—I felt a mixture of relief and a chill run down my spine.

II. Clean Heating: Easier Said Than Done

I have frequently sat through press conferences and expert seminars on air quality management, listening to officials and scholars discuss the ban on burning loose coal in rural areas. Those in a position to steer policy tend to feed questioners answers such as ‘improving subsidy mechanisms’, ‘steadily advancing clean heating upgrades tailored to local conditions’, ‘eschewing a one-size-fits-all approach’, and ‘strengthening rural building energy efficiency retrofits’. While these statements are undeniably sound and polished, they inevitably ring hollow when transposed into local contexts.

◉ In early January, rural documentary filmmaker ‘Yuzhen Jishi’ observed farmers gathering firewood for heating in the countryside of Hebei.

In 2018, the Shandong Provincial Government published the *Shandong Province Winter Clean Heating Plan (2018–2022)*, aiming for an average clean heating uptake of 75% across rural areas by 2022. A local environmental organisation, “Green Action Qilu“, set out to find out what this 75% figure truly entailed in practice.

Following several years of field research, the group found that although Shandong has ostensibly “completed” its clean heating retrofit targets, the system struggles to survive once subsidies are phased out. Across the province, delays in disbursing grants and inconsistent enforcement of subsidy policies have left many farmers unwilling to continue using the new facilities. An analysis of over 500 valid survey responses revealed that nearly a sixth of those who had undergone the retrofit have either already abandoned it or are planning to, primarily because of the high cost of heating. Furthermore, should future subsidies be withdrawn, a further 41.6% of households are likely to follow suit.

The financial strain is not limited to households; local authorities also appear to be losing the capacity to procure clean coal. By trawling official procurement portals, Green Action Qilu discovered a marked decline in clean coal purchases by governments at all levels across Shandong in recent years. At the same time, a district in Weihai that once operated more than 40 civilian bulk coal yards has quietly reopened 17 of them following an initial crackdown and closure.

High costs are not the only reason farmers are abandoning clean heating. The transition is not solely reliant on natural gas; renewable sources such as solar power are widely touted as cheaper and cleaner alternatives. Yet, when Green Action Qilu conducted household surveys in a local village, they found that two-thirds of the state-subsidised solar-assisted electric heating units had been shelved, with a third sold off as scrap. The culprit was consistently poor manufacturing quality, which created a frustrating paradox: the systems only worked when the sun was shining brightly (when households rarely needed extra warmth), and failed completely during overcast weather when heating was most essential.

This pattern repeated itself in neighbouring villages, compounded by a complete lack of after-sales repair services. Eventually, residents were forced to revert to traditional coal stoves. These proved far more versatile: not only could they pipe heat to the traditional *kang* beds, but they also doubled as reliable water heaters and cooking stoves.

“These state-subsidised products are not unbranded or unregulated goods, yet half were rendered useless within the first year, and by the second or third year, hardly anyone was still using them,” explained Guo Yongqi, director of the organisation. “Because of the poor build quality, issues like leaking joints and ruptured pipes are commonplace, making rooftop installations a genuine safety hazard. Products from established manufacturers perform better; their quality and installation standards are sound, and they offer reasonably reliable after-sales support.”

Official procurement records indicate that between 2019 and 2021, Shandong rolled out 11 solar-assisted heating projects through government contracts, ostensibly serving nearly 30,000 households with a combined contract value of approximately ¥145 million. Strikingly, all 11 contracts were awarded to local small and medium-sized enterprises; not a single bid came from a leading industry manufacturer. In light of this, Green Action Qilu has issued a stark warning: the countryside must not be treated as a dumping ground for substandard products.

When compared with the plight of Hebei farmers eight or nine years ago, who were left with no gas supply at all, the current situation does represent a step forward. At least gas is available; the downside is merely that subsidies have been scaled back, leaving households to foot a larger portion of the bill.

According to a now-removed report in the *Farmers’ Daily*, natural gas in rural Hebei costs between ¥3.15 and ¥3.40 per cubic metre, meaning it takes between ¥5,000 and ¥10,000 to heat a 100 square metre home over the winter. By contrast, Beijing offers several heating options for a property of the same size: a direct-supply coal boiler costs ¥1,650, an indirect-supply coal boiler ¥1,900, and gas, oil, or electric boilers run at ¥3,000. (To be clear, centralised coal burning remains permissible because facilities are fitted with end-of-pipe emission controls; it is the unregulated, scattered burning of domestic coal that is banned.)

Government statistics further highlight the disparity: in 2024, the average disposable income for urban residents in Beijing stood at ¥92,464, compared to just ¥22,022 for farmers in Hebei.

Against the backdrop of Beijing’s plummeting PM2.5 levels and the abundant central heating enjoyed by city dwellers, public discourse remains mired in debates over whether farmers just a hundred kilometres away even deserve to heat their homes in winter. The sheer jarring nature of this divide feels almost surreal, as if the two groups were living in entirely different centuries.

◉ Heating charges for Beijing’s 2025–2026 winter season. Source: Official website of the Beijing Municipal People’s Government.

III. Crop Straw Is Also Banned from Burning

Coal is off-limits for farmers to burn; natural gas is beyond their means. Since I began focusing on agriculture two years ago, I have discovered that the crop residue left in the fields is likewise prohibited. Managing crop straw is a longstanding issue. As early as 1991, the government issued directives to vigorously promote returning crop residue to the field, with the aim of utilising the surplus. But it did not work. Driven by the widespread adoption of chemical fertilisers, improved rural living standards, and the migration of surplus labour to urban areas, the demand for straw as fuel, building material, livestock fodder, and compost raw material plummeted. Concurrently, agricultural transformations such as increased cropping intensity and mechanisation turned straw from a valuable asset into a nuisance. For farmers, the most convenient solution was always to simply burn it.

In 1999, several ministries jointly issued the *Measures for Prohibiting and Comprehensively Utilising Crop Straw Burning*, marking the start of administrative bans on the practice and setting a quantified target for straw utilisation for the first time: 85%. Formulated more than two decades ago, this policy was motivated primarily by public safety rather than human health. At the time, dense smoke from burning straw had caused numerous incidents that disrupted aircraft take-offs and landings and compromised road safety. Consequently, the no-burning zones explicitly designated in the *Measures* were confined to major transport arteries and high-voltage transmission lines, leaving most farmers free to burn straw as they saw fit.

A genuine, nationwide ban on burning crop straw only followed the aforementioned ‘Air Ten’ action plan. Although burning straw accounts for a relatively small proportion of overall smog, the practice is concentrated in the summer and autumn months. This leads to short-term spikes in high-concentration particulate emissions, making it a key focus for environmental regulators.

Under the central government’s stringent quantitative targets for PM2.5, local authorities displayed unprecedented resolve in enforcing the ban on straw burning. In 2015, for instance, Henan Province used satellite remote sensing data officially published by the Ministry of Environmental Protection to track ignition points. Operating on a county-by-county basis, the provincial government deducted 500,000 RMB from the budgets of any county found to have a single ignition point. In one nationally designated poverty-stricken county within Henan, the administrative costs alone for managing the ban that year approached 10 million RMB. Despite establishing a command centre in every village, deploying all township officials to village-level posts, and maintaining 24-hour surveillance, the county was still fined a total of 20 million RMB for inadequate enforcement after multiple ignition points were detected.

The government has also allocated special subsidy funds for the comprehensive utilisation of crop residue, but against the backdrop of an unprecedented volume of straw produced in China’s agricultural history, these subsidies are a drop in the ocean. The ban relies predominantly on coercive administrative measures. Incidents of farmers being fined or criminally detained for burning straw have become commonplace.

Nevertheless, many farmers continue to take the risk of secretly burning straw at night. Some flee prematurely out of fear of detection, leaving fires to spread to adjacent haystacks or even spark wildfires. Others, wary of the consequences, simply dump the straw into nearby ditches and reservoirs, resulting in water pollution.

At the same time, factors such as soil degradation and inadequate technical implementation have meant that incorporating straw into the soil has brought its own set of problems for farmers, including increased pest infestations and higher operational costs. Consequently, many have begun to question the practicality of this approach.

 

◉ Experience from ecological farming initiatives across various regions shows that, with healthy soil and appropriate management, straw mulching and soil incorporation do not increase the risk of pests and diseases. Instead, they deliver a range of economic, environmental and social benefits. Click the image above to explore the experiences of farmers across China.
As these problems have surfaced, the simplistic references to “returning straw to the soil” in policy documents have gradually evolved into more precise terms such as “scientific straw incorporation” and “rapid field application following controlled composting”. This alone indicates that policymakers have finally recognised the widespread mismanagement that has characterised the burning ban over the past decade.

IV. Who Should Bear the Cost of the Green Transition?

At its core, the bans on burning straw and loose coal rest on the same assumption: as society embarks on a “green transition”, it is farmers who must bear the extra costs so that everyone else can breathe clean air. The same logic applies to the prohibition of small-scale livestock and poultry farming on farms, justified in the name of environmental protection.But is this fair, particularly to farmers, who are a low-income and vulnerable group? After all, they have already paid the “price” during the process of urbanisation. Admittedly, burning coal and straw, as well as raising pigs and poultry, do cause pollution and require regulation and management.Yet urban residents driving cars, heating their homes, and ordering takeaways generate no less environmental pollution than burning coal and straw. Moreover, farmers work in agriculture to provide food for everyone, whereas urban consumers drive consumption primarily for their own comfort and convenience. When cities roll out environmental measures such as switching from coal to electricity, waste sorting, or driving restrictions, the implementation tends to be more nuanced. At the very least, these policies avoid disrupting residents’ daily lives, or provide affordable alternatives (such as public transport). So why are farmers so frequently subjected to a blunt, one-size-fits-all approach to environmental regulation?

There is already an abundance of policy, technical, and research material on how farmers should heat their homes. What we truly need, however, is a return to common sense and basic humanity.

Foodthink Author
Kong Lingyu
Foodthink Project Director, former environmental journalist

 

 

 

 

Editor: Tianle

Published by Foodthink