Desert work: state greening and the formation of a rural ecological workforce at Babusha, 1981–2026

This article examines how state greening reorganized rural work at Babusha Forest Farm in Gansu from 1981 to 2026. It draws on thirty oral-history sessions with twenty-six participants and on publicly accessible official and news reports. The evidence shows overlapping changes rather than discrete labor regimes. Early household contracting combined state payments, family labor, claims to land and trees, and later shares. After the farm incorporated in 2009, project budgets expanded paid hiring and tied payment to measured tasks and inspection. From the late 2010s, labor-team leaders recruited seasonal workers, arranged transport, advanced wages, and sometimes absorbed inspection losses. Most seasonal workers interviewed still farmed or relied on other household income. They valued earning near home and seeing less dust, but also described bodily strain and payment disputes. Babusha therefore supports a qualified account of ecological proletarianization: project-funded restoration increased wage work and moved recruitment, inspection, and payment increasingly beyond the household, without fully separating most workers interviewed from land or household production. The case places ecological restoration within labor history by showing how public projects, local institutions, intermediaries, and household strategies formed a rural ecological workforce.