Sustainable Management Practices of State-Owned Forest Farms in Subtropical Regions: Case Study of S Forest Farm in China

Abstract

The construction quality of state-owned forest farms is crucial to the overall development of ecological civilization. Evaluating the development status of these forest farms is essential. Based on field research and existing studies, this paper uses the S (S is a Mandarin Pinyin abbreviation for the name of the forest farm, to maintain anonymity) state-owned forest farm in Fujian Province, a subtropical region, as a case study. The Delphi method and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) are employed to determine the weight values of various standard indicators. Compared to previous research, this study finds that the sustainability of human resources and socioeconomic factors in forest farms also play a significant role in achieving sustainable management of state-owned forest farms. By collecting indicator values and reference values, an evaluation of the sustainable management status of the S state-owned forest farm is conducted, revealing that its sustainable management status is at a “good” level. However, there are still problems in forest classification, the ratio of plantation to natural forest, pest outbreaks, mechanization of forest production, employee incentives, tourism, and forest certification, which constrain sustainable management. This study proposes strategies to optimize sustainable management from forest production operations and management perspectives.