Farmer’s adaptive strategies on land competition between societal outcomes and agroecosystem conservation in the purple-soiled hilly region, southwestern China

The worldwide extension and intensification of farming during the last century has led to ecosystem degradation and caused a series of environmental problems. Conservation of ecosystem services in agricultural regions has been implemented by top-down government actions or initiated by resilience scientists in the developed countries, but little attention was paid in the developing countries, especially in some remote mountainous regions. The present paper presents a case study showing how local farmers obtained both maximal societal outcomes and agroecosystem conservation interests in the absence of distinct boundaries between agricultural and protected ecological areas in the densely populated purple-soiled hilly region of southwestern China. The local community (Yanting County) has developed a mosaic agricultural-forestry-fishery-stock breeding system with spatially targeted land uses, diverse agricultural productions and multiple ecological partnerships. It indicates that the local farmers have hereditarily perceived sound strategies on maximizing sustainable societal outcomes and optimizing tradeoffs among macro-market, state policy, new technological facility and ecological reinforcement.