Management of Sloping Lands for Sustainable Agriculture in Sichuan

IPNI-1997-CHN-SC22

14 May 2003

2002 Annual Interpretive Summary

Management of Sloping Lands for Sustainable Agriculture in Sichuan Province, 2002

Project objective: To evaluate balanced fertilization and biological barriers (BF/BB) against expensive engineered terracing (ET) on sloping lands, and to demonstrate the new technology’s effectiveness and the profitably resulting from reducing soil erosion while improving farmer income. For the past three years, the BF/BB method has significantly reduced soil loss and increased farmer profit. This project has been highly evaluated by the provincial and county governments as well as farmers, and thus has been appointed as a national model by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Four years after implementation, the advantages in combating soil erosion and improving income potential using BF/BB is more pronounced than ever before. Although alley cropping reduced crop yield per farmed area by 2,200 kg/ha (36%), the technique also reduced soil loss from 2.1 to 1.4 t/ha (33%). Net income was increased by US$935/ha as a result of higher value crop production (including daylily and pears). The integration of alley cropping with balanced nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) application of 150-75-120 kg N-P2O5-K2O/ha for wheat (barley) and 0-100-80 kg/ha for peanut reduced crop yield by 1,150 kg/ha (6%), but improved total system net income by US$1,690 and reduced soil loss by 36%.

Compared with results from last year, an overall reduction in soil loss was observed in all treatments due to reduced rainfall intensity. However, it is obvious that the positive effects of biological cash crop barriers are becoming more significant as time progresses. The new technology can be applied on 240,000 ha of sloping lands in Sichuan Province. In 2001 and 2002, this technique was extended to eight more counties in Sichuan and Chongqing Provinces. The experimental site at Jianyang received visitors from around the country and this profitable soil conservation story is well known. Sichu-12