The 8 kinds: food crop, economic crop, vegetable crop, fruit crop, forage and manure crop, flower crop, medicine crop and forest crop in China, according to agronomy and use were differentiated.

An increasing amount of forest land has been used for industrial purposes, or for agricultural development such as crop growing.

Forests are not only trees, and forest ecosystems are more fragile, longer-lived and less closely controlled than crop fields.