The government should put forward more measures to support forestry to both boost farmer income and protect the environment, said a senior political adviser and leading economist.

The area of forestry farms owned by village governments is about 2.7 billion mu (180 million hectares), Li Yining, an economics professor at Peking University, told China Daily during an exclusive interview.

Li, a member of the standing committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, was a PhD tutor to Premier Li Keqiang in the 1990s.