Rural Livelihoods Diversification And Land Use Change

It has become a hot topic about the livelihoods diversification and land-use change and the relationship between them in developing countries. As a central greatly significant decision to improve the ecological environment, the migration related to its population, social and economic development and even the land-usechanges for the immigration area It has great significant to study the characteristics of rural livelihoods and land-use changes, especially to the north-west karst regions in Guangxisuffering from ecological fragile crisis and poverty. Based on a fieldwork data collected from farm households in 20 Tuns of Jinqiao Country located in Da’an Town of Huanjiang County in Guangxi, using the tools from PRA, this article designated a livelihood quantitative index system appraising different 8 farmer groups,researching the land-use change referencing to the rate of land-use change and the form of investment value, and the influence between household livelihood and land use change. And the main draw conclusions as following:(1) Livelihood assets and diversity have great difference between different types of households. For the total livelihoods assets, non-immigrant households are more than immigrant households, and agriculture-dependenthouseholdsgreater off-farm households more than off-farm dependenthouseholds above pure agriculture households. The more abundant of human assets they have, the higher households’ non-agriculturaldegree. The more natural assets,the lower degree of their agricultural dependence.The trend of the immigrant households’ livelihood diversification is obvious, and the greater degree of their agriculture-dependent, the more obvious of the livelihoods diversification. The livelihoods diversification of the non-immigrant households is more significant but great changes, however, it turns reverse changes of thenon-agriculturaldegree.And the immigrant households have higher enthusiasm to the new labor force’s transform.(2) The land-use changes significantly in the research area. With the land used into corn,sugarcane and paddy decreasing, the eucalyptus and walnut increased fast and the mulberry and orchard has increased. The trend of arable land’s abandonshowsmore obvious in the non-immigrant. Land intensive level continued to rise in arable but decreased in the overall agricultural land. The immigration households have integrated into the village since the immigration policy, and changed from grain crops to cash crops in planting.However, the fragmentation degree of landis highin that place, and the large-scale planting of eucalyptus have an negative effect on the local ecological environment. The ways of agricultural land’s acquisition and utilization are neededby the guidance, planning and management.(3)The thought and pattern of the land farming are immobilized there, and the pattern of non-farm labor transferring is very single. With the value of the human and natural assets become higher, the diversification of agricultural livelihood is more obvious and the level of land use intensity is lower. The farmers having more financial assets prefer toincrease the production inputs. With the economic permission, the local farmers have more willing to engaged in the activities related to agriculture. So to explore the ways of local non-agricultural transferring will be benefit to increase their level of living and production and their happiness by helpingthemto develop the diversified agricultural management, or providing some technical guidance of new crop cultivation.