The government has been paying farmers to convert their land to forest, but an end to those payments could mean recent environmental gains are lost.

Hundreds of millions of farmers are wondering whether to plant trees or crops on their farmland next year, as key government subsidies are set to expire.

Starting this year, subsidies to farmers for growing trees on their farmland – subsidies that have been around for almost 15 years – are scheduled to be phased out in the 25 provinces and regions involved. It is unclear whether the government will extend them.

Since they were introduced, natural vegetation has reappeared on 139 million mu (or 9.3 million hectares) of severely desertified land and steep slopes that had been used to grow crops.

All of this was backed by the government's subsidies. And without them, it seems inevitable that farmers will reclaim a vast amount of land for agricultural use.

The tree-planting campaign took root in 1999. Devastating floods the previous year exposed the hazards of deforestation and desertification driven by expanding farmland. To curb further deterioration of the environment, the government launched its "farmland-to-forest" policy, reversing a trend that saw the country's area of farmland expand for nearly half a century.

The policy has also changed the lives of 124 million farmers. By the end of 2011, every household that agreed to have farmland transformed into forest has received an average of more than 7,000 yuan in government subsidies. The sum may seem small, but for most farmers the payments were significant.

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