Traditional farming system for soil conservation on slope farmland in southwestern China

Traditional and indigenous knowledge for sustainable land use and agro-ecosystem management has received increasing attention in recent years, especially in resource-poor, low-input and smallholder farming systems. The present paper introduces a traditional farming system, which is called “Biangoubeigou” and “Tiaoshamiantu” by local farmers in Sichuan hilly region, the upper Yangtze River basin of China. A field survey, interviews with farmers and local governors, and soil core sampling along a slope transect for 137Cs assessment of net soil loss were carried out in Jiajia Village in the winter of 2002. Annual net soil loss in the area where traditional soil conservation approaches had been practised was estimated at 24.15 t ha−1 yr−1 using the 137Cs technique. Compared with the highest on-site point soil loss of more than 105.80 t ha−1 yr−1 by the 137Cs technique in this study and field erosion rate of 42.21 t ha−1 yr−1 from other plot monitoring studies in the similar area, this traditional farming system has effectively conserved soil on the slope land in the past decades.