The unsustainable agricultural production mode of “high input and high output” has imposed a heavy burden on China’s ecosystems, and severely restricted the sustainable development of the country’s agrifood systems. Taking long-term prevention and control of agricultural nonpoint-source pollution as the key approach can play an important role in upgrading country’s agriculture to circular and renewable agriculture-food-ecological system circulation. Currently, the five major sources of agricultural nonpoint-source pollution in China are livestock, poultry and aquaculture; chemical fertilizers; pesticides; crop residues; and waste plastic films. The Chinese government has issued corresponding policies and measures to carry out prevention and control at the source and end, which have achieved initial results. Its accurate grasp of direction and implementation provide lessons for other developing countries. Several years of treatments have resulted in remarkable reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus emissions from the livestock and poultry farming, but the pollutant emissions of the aquaculture are increasing, and the utilization rate of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is still relatively low compared with that of developed countries. China mainly relies on policies and legal means, and government subsidies to control agricultural nonpointsource pollution in the short term. However, more emerging options should be explored to establish a long-term mechanism to prevent and control agricultural nonpoint-source pollution and to transform the agrifood systems to become even greener, including property rights arrangements, interprovincial ecological compensation, green finance, and brand building for ecological agricultural products.

During recent decades, agriculture has developed rapidly in China, ensuring food security and enriching residents’ diets. At the same time, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the country’s agrifood systems have increased by only 16 percent in the past two decades and fell for two consecutive years in 2017 and 2018. The proportion of GHG emissions in the country’s food systems to the total GHG emissions dropped from 18.7 percent in 1997 to 8.2 percent in 2018. GHG emissions from the Chinese agrifood systems should not be ignored, neverthless. In 2018, GHG emissions from agrifood systems was still as high as 1.09 billion tons CO2eq1. While ensuring food security as the national top priority, measures such as improving agricultural technologies, reducing food loss and waste, and shifting dietary patterns must be adopted to reduce GHG emissions from agrifood systems. Improvements in agricultural technologies are the most effective standalone measures, but the combined three measures above have the most significant effect on GHG emission reduction. Projections show that the combined three measures can redcue GHG emissions by 47 percent in 2060 from the 2020 level. Land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) play a key role as a carbon sink. The carbon sequestration from LULUCF was around 1.1 billion tons CO2eq in 2014. It can increase to 1.6 billion tons of CO2eq per year in 2060, thus LULUCF could completely offset GHG emissions from agrifood systems and still have a surplus capacity to sequester nearly 1 billion additional tons of CO2eq per year, well above the current level of net sequestration,contributing to overall carbon neutrality of China.

This case study was conducted to generate insights on the financial sustainability of selected VDFSGs and to gather information on members’ perceptions of the usefulness of these institutions in coping with household and climate change-related shocks or stresses. Financial sustainability was analyzed by conducting a detailed financial analysis of six selected VDFSGs to determine the sufficiency of interest payments as revenue to cover total costs as well as to evaluate loan recovery and equity build- up. Members’ perception of the usefulness of VDFSGs in helping them to cope with and adjust to family and climate change-related shocks/stresses was determined by conducting Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) among selected representatives of VDFSG members. Useful feedback of the financial performance and areas for improvement were generated. The Pu Hong, Pu Chhob, and Prek Svay VDFSGs were considered financially sustainable based on the results of the study. The study also revealed that the VDFSGs are considered most useful when there are crop failures due to extreme weather events and when there are medical emergencies in the household. The FGD participants and key informants expressed confidence that they are in a better position to cope with their vulnerabilities due to the presence of a VDFSG in their village.