The problems of soil erosion, environmental degradation, and rural livelihoods in the Chinese Loess Plateau have always been of deep concern to relevant government departments and academic institutions. Since the “Grain for Green” (GfG) program was launched in 1999, agricultural practices including the conversion of sloped farmlands to terraces and building farm dams have been implemented to promote the ecological restoration in the Chinese Loess Plateau. The impact of agricultural practices on sustainable rural livelihoods and rural transformation, however, has not yet been adequately addressed.

Dr. TANG Qing, Prof. XU Yong, Ph.D. student LI Yang from Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and Prof. BENNETT Sean J. from State University of New York at Buffalo, designed a conceptual framework for agricultural practices and sustainable rural livelihoods for the Yangou watershed within the Chinese Loess Plateau, and analyzed the impacts of agricultural practices on sustainable rural livelihoods and rural transformation.

They found that agricultural practices that include building terraces, returning sloped farmlands to forestland and grassland, and expanding orchards all have had positive and significant impacts on farmers’ livelihood assets, strategies, outcomes, and vulnerabilities. These positive and significant impacts of new agricultural practices on the sustainable rural livelihoods of the Yangou watershed are evident in the community’s reduced dependence upon grain and subsidies income, the diversified strategies for livelihood, and the improved environmental indices. For instance, the watershed community experienced 159% raise in per capita net income from 1997 to 2003 and 99% decrease in sediment yield from 1998 to 2007. The successful implementation of new agricultural land management practices and policies in the Yangou watershed strongly suggest that similar transformations can be achieved in similar regions throughout China’s vast rural areas of the Loess Plateau.

The related results have been published in the journal of Applied Geography (Tang, Q., Bennett, S. J., Xu, Y., et al. Agricultural practices and sustainable livelihoods: Rural transformation within the Loess Plateau, China. Applied Geography, 2013, 41: 15-23). This research was supported by the Key Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KZZD-EW-06-01), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41171449), and the Key Project for the Strategic Science Plan in IGSNRR, CAS (grant No. 2012ZD006).

The specific conceptual framework for agricultural practices and sustainable rural livelihoods on the Chinese Loess Plateau and relationship between sediment yield normalized by rainfall (A) and runoff (B) in the Yangou watershed from 1998 to 2007. (Imaged by TANG Qing)