Burning stubble in the fields had been largely banned since 1999, but local governments are now allowing the practice in some circumstances.
China’s new Ecological and Environmental Code, approved on 12 March, includes a requirement for scientific and accurate “organisation and management of straw burning.”
Experts say this marks a shift from a fairly comprehensive ban, focused on air quality, towards balancing the needs of the environment and farmers. The move could be seen as an acknowledgement that the original policy harmed livelihoods while benefiting the environment.
For over 20 years, burning straw in China’s fields had been subject to a central government ban which was more strictly implemented in the north of the country. With considerable effort and cost, the practice was largely eliminated. But over the last two years, some local governments have begun relaxing the ban in certain conditions, such as when wind speed and rainfall are favourable for smoke dispersion.
The two-decade process – from a simple ban to a cautious relaxation – has seen policymakers respond to public concerns. As we will see, they have taken into account the use and availability of technology, carrot-and-stick approaches and trade-offs between the economy and the environment.
It represents a good example of the complexities of environmental governance in China.
From resource to waste: Straw needed no more
Straw in this context means the stalks left behind after the harvesting of crops including wheat, rice, corn, tubers, oil crops, cotton and sugar.
The practice of burning it in the fields is relatively new. For thousands of years, it had been a valuable resource used both domestically and commercially: as fodder for livestock and as fuel for heating and cooking, with the ashes then becoming fertiliser. It was also used as thatch, in bricks, to make brooms, as padding, and even in arts and crafts.
But from the 1990s, farmers started burning that once-useful resource in the fields.
Partly, this was because increasing food production meant more straw supply, just as demand was decreasing. Mechanisation led to less need for straw as fodder for working animals; coal and electricity were replacing straw for heating and cooking. Shifting straw out of the fields was a laborious and expensive process. With younger rural residents moving to the cities to find work and leaving behind only older workers, it was no longer possible to collect and process the straw during busy harvest periods. And in general, for farmers, the straw burning reduced pests and diseases for the next crop better than did working it back into the field.
The burning usually took place after the summer and autumn harvests – roughly in May or June, and then September to November. During harvest, crops need to be dried, sorted, packaged and stored, all within a week or two. Then the fields need to be prepared: straw dealt with, soil ploughed, fertiliser and pesticides applied, water and seeds added. Any hiccups, such as an untimely rain, can delay these processes. Dealing with the straw is one of the toughest and most time consuming of these tasks.
So, with mechanisation increasing, energy use changing, and less labour available in the fields, straw became a waste product which it made sense to burn.
The 1999 ban
The burning led to fires that got out of control, polluted the atmosphere and caused health problems. It also impeded transportation by reducing visibility, damaged soil structure and was unpleasant for residents.
Research published in 2025 gathered data from 156 city-level jurisdictions, covering the years 2015 to 2020. It found levels of atmospheric pollutants increased for three days after a straw burning incident. The ban has always been most strictly enforced in Beijing and nearby, but even then straw burning last June caused a spike in air pollution in Langfang, to Beijing’s south.
Beyond the smoke and ash affecting the eyes and respiratory system, substances in the smoke such as benzopyrene and dioxins can also cause cardiovascular disease and cancer. Research from 2020 found that every extra ten straw-burning locations within a 50 km radius of a county centre resulted in a 7.62% increase in levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution and a 1.56% rise in death rates.
In 1999, a national policy on straw burning and straw recycling was published. The Environmental Protection Bureau (now the Ministry of Ecology and Environment) was the lead authority behind the policy, with the ministries of agriculture and finance, and the road, rail and aviation authorities also involved. That the transportation authorities were involved shows this was never a simple matter of air pollution and public health.
The only areas specified in the ban were surrounding transport infrastructure: within 15 km of airports; 2 km of expressways, national highways and railways; and 1 km of provincial trunk roads. This suggests transportation safety was the main cause of the ban.
It was tightened up in 2008, as Beijing held the Olympic Games, with complete bans across Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Liaoning. Roughly speaking, the closer you got to Beijing, the stricter the ban.
Although the straw-burning bans were implemented under an environmental banner, it has never been about air quality targets alone: there have always been more important aims for government, including traffic safety and major events.
The straw ban combo: punishments, enforcement, incentives
For over 20 years, central and local governments have been issuing rules and guidance on the burning, disposal and recycling of straw. Ultimately, implementation lies almost entirely in the hands of the grassroots: county-level environmental authorities and township and county cadres, for whom it is one more part of an already heavy workload.
About 10 years ago, Hebei had 80,000 township and over 600,000 village cadres participating in work to monitor and stop straw burning. In Heilongjiang, cadres from township chiefs to village officials are on 24-hour watch for straw burning during the two peak periods. If satellites detect straw burning, local governments in some regions can have CNY 100,000 (USD 15,000) deducted from their funding, so it’s a high-pressure time. According to a report from 2024, one county in Heilongjiang spent CNY 100,000 just on food and drink for the officials monitoring straw burning after the autumn harvest.
Local officials who fail to stop straw burning can face sanctions. Township and village officials can be called in to explain themselves; environmental bureau chiefs and township party secretaries can be suspended for investigation; while village party secretaries can lose their posts.
Punishments vary for those doing the actual straw burning. Hebei, for example, imposes fines of CNY 500 to 1,500. More terrifying, perhaps, are the slogans used to persuade people to obey the law: “Burn straw in the morning, do time in the evening” and “Set fire to the fields, and you’ll end up in jail”.
But alongside the stick of the ban, the government has always used the carrot of incentives. In 2022, central government provided straw-recycling subsidies to the tune of CNY 14 billion. They don’t just go to the farmers. They also fund the processing of straw and use of straw products, including the purchase of machinery, preferential power prices and transportation costs.
Yao Zonglu, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, says that in 2022 China produced 865 million tonnes of straw, 88% of which was recycled. Most is shredded and returned to the soil as fertiliser, either tilled into the earth or left on the surface. And much of the rest is removed and processed into fodder or burned as biofuel.
The 1999 straw-burning policy required recycling rates of 85% by 2005. A 2023 plan on continuing air quality improvements said rates were steady at 86%.
That means that even after nearly 25 years of strict controls, more than 10% of China’s straw is not being reused, and some of it is being burned. What has made farmers risk the legal and economic consequences?
Labour, costs, pests, disease
As mentioned, recycling straw from the fields is hard work. Moving straw from 3 mu (0.2 hectares) of land takes two strong workers three days. China, though, has a severe lack of agricultural labour, and most of those working in the fields are older or women. For many, there simply isn’t the time to do this when it needs to be done.
Even using the straw in situ as fertiliser adds two processes: shredding, then tilling the shredded straw back into the soil. Ten years ago, a China Agricultural University professor, Xie Guanghui, calculated that one mu of land earned about CNY 800, while inputs like seeds and fertiliser would cost CNY 200. Returning straw to the soil adds an extra CNY 100 in costs.
Such returning is also complex work. There are various ways of processing it, depending on what the original crop was, what will be planted next, and regional and soil conditions. Different machinery can be needed, with variable costs and timings.
Farmers often prefer to burn the straw as the potassium-rich ash is itself an excellent natural fertiliser. The main reason farmers oppose the ban, though, is that burning kills off pests and diseases. The prohibition led to a significant uptick in those problems. Keeping yields up has required increased use of fertiliser and other chemicals, which adds costs and goes against the original environmental aims of the ban. In effect, tackling an air pollution problem has worsened an agricultural chemical pollution problem.
Farmers aren’t opposed to recycling their straw – if it doesn’t add labour and other costs, if it doesn’t affect the next season’s crop, and if it doesn’t worsen pests and diseases. But while those issues remain unresolved, they still have motive to burn.
Local relaxation followed up at central level
In response to widespread calls for a relaxation, in 2023 the agriculture and environment ministries carried out a survey of the ban and straw recycling across eight provinces. That process concluded that the ban should continue but with a shift of emphasis to recycling and making straw more valuable.
Hunan, Guangxi and Yunnan had already allowed burning in certain cases. There was also partial evidence that air pollution might not be a problem: the city of Guigang in Guangxi allowed orderly straw burning for four years, yet saw air quality improve.
In 2024, several delegates attending the Two Sessions called for the ban to be adjusted, mostly because of pest and disease issues. Cao Xiaogeng, a delegate to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, had studied various locations and found that returning straw to the soil increases incidence of pests and diseases by 9.5%. A delegate also pointed out that long cold winters in the north-east mean straw does not decompose to fertilise the fields.
The 2025 version of the No. 1 Central Document – an annual statement of central government’s agricultural policy for the year ahead – offered support for straw recycling but also said the scope of the ban should be precise and in line with laws and regulations. The agriculture ministry’s interpretation was that this was to end the general nationwide ban on straw burning in favour of “limited” burning. Environmental capacity, soil conditions and agricultural characteristics would determine where burning could take place.
Also in 2025, Hunan ruled that straw affected by pests or disease could be burned in certain cases. Even the environment ministry’s official outlet described this as responding to public concerns and solving the problems caused by a general ban.
A less obvious problem than pests and diseases is the shrinking and aging of the agricultural workforce. This makes recycling straw more and more difficult and means local officials work exhausting schedules to stop burning, with overtime payments draining government coffers. The burning ban has been strictly enforced, but more recently some local governments have explored the permitting of limited burning, with a top-down relaxation finally coming in 2025.
The ban’s limits and negative outcomes
The ban has had considerable positive outcomes but, as mentioned, has been unable to get straw recycling rates past the 90% mark. And as straw burning is widely scattered and generally on a smaller scale, it is hard to manage centrally.
Are the costs of the ban, both in terms of government spending on enforcement and agricultural labour, now outstripping the benefits? More importantly, does the policy have negative outcomes, imposing costs?
A 2025 systematic review found that straw burning does not take place in isolation. It is the outcome of a combination of agricultural modernisation and structural, technological and socio-cultural factors. For the farmers, burning is the logical choice. When environmental requirements trump farmers’ needs, problems with labour shortages, costs and pests and diseases can arise. The policy has brought environmental benefits but led to hardships and losses for farmers.
As far as possible, policy should aim to benefit people without harming others. The implementation, debate and changes of the ban over the past two decades, and the shift from an general ban to a more limited and scientific approach, has given us a lesson, if late, on governance.
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