Farmers’ Participation In Soil Conservation In The Three Gorges Reservoir Area,China

Soil conservation is an important way of ecological barrier construction,which is of great significance to ensure the regional ecological security and to promote the sustainable development of social economy.Farmers are not only the beneficiaries of soil conservation,but also the main force in soil conservation programs construction.Farmers’ participation is of vital importance to regional soil conservation.The paper investigated 209 households inhabited in the soil conservation programs region in the Three Gorges Reservoir area,and analyzed the degree of farmers participating in soil conservation,the participation stage characteristics,the behavior type,mechanism and the main influencing factor.In further,the mechanism of farmer participation in soil conservation was revealed,in order to provide basis for soil conservation decision-making in the Three Gorges Reservoir area.The results are as follows:(1)Farmers’ awareness of soil conservation in the Three Gorges Reservoir area needs to be further improved.The farmers who know the policy of soil conservation account for 56.46%,and farmers’ cognitive channels are relatively single.(2)The reasons for farmers to participate in soil conservation programs differ with each person.In order to make money,solve the problem of cultivated land inconvenience,manage coordination and implement the national policy,the farmers who participate in soil conservation programs in the reservoir area account for 48.80%,28.23%,12.92% and 8.14%,respectively.From the form of participation,including labor fees,invest money,invest labor and money and other form(such as the provision of cultivated land to build rock bund terrace).Among them,the labor fees account for 62.04%,and the other form account for 28.70%.However,invest money,invest labor and money form less than 10%.As a whole,the forms of farmers’ participation in soil conservation programs in the Three Gorges Reservoir area are relatively simple.(3)The degree of farmers’ participation in soil conservation programs is low in the Three Gorges Reservoir area.The households participate in soil conservation programs,most of which are no(42.58%)or less(30.14%)participation.Moderate participation account for 20.58%,and mainly involved in planning programming and construction.The high degree of participation is only 6.70%.In addition,the proportion of farmers participating in the planning programming stage,construction and final-period management is 33.01%,46.61% and 9.09%,respectively.Therefore,the proportion of farmers participating in the soil conservation project is low.(4)The dominant factors that influence farmers’ participation in soil conservation programs are whether they can make money,whether they are satisfied with soil conservation programs,and the farmers’ cognition of soil conservation policy.To some extent,the more farmers can earn from the conservation program,the more satisfactory the farmers are to the soil conservation programs,and the higher the farmers’ awareness of soil conservation policy,the greater the enthusiasm of them to participate in soil conservation programs.(5)In the long-term cultivation process,the farmers in The Three Gorges Reservoir area are willing to participate in soil conservation,mainly embodying as farmland management and conservation tillage behaviors.The farmers’ need of soil conservation is often driven by harsh cultivation environment,and farmers’ motivation of soil conservation is produced by farmers’ need.Under the impact of the motivation,farmers are willing to carry out soil conservation,including digging side ditches,turning sediments back to farmland,slope length cutdown and downslope tillage,contour ploughing,upslope ploughing,no-tillage,crop intercropping,planting hedgerow and herbicides weeding.Among them,four kinds of tillage behaviors,like as crop intercropping,digging side ditches,slope length cutdown and downslope tillage,and turning sediments back to farmland,are the important manifestation of farmers to participate in soil conservation.(6)Farmers are easily influenced by the national soil conservation policies and thus participate in soil conservation.The policy-oriented behaviors could further be categorized into three subtypes.The first one is remuneration of labor.Famers participate in soil conservation programs construction such as transforming slope into terrace,and obtain remuneration.Secondly,it is economic compensation.Farmers respond to the call of national soil conservation and ecological construction,and take defarming actions and get certain compensation.The third category is government subsidies.Farmers build soil conservation facilities like ponds,roads and so on,in the case of pre-subsidy or post-subsidy for government funds.