Study Of Sustainable Agriculture Development In The Karst Areas

The phenomenon and process of dissolvable rock dissolved by actions of the natural chemistry dissolving including water washing, gravity erosion, material movement and aggradations is called karst. It is a kind of environmental system with special materials, energy, structure and functions. Its characters are high environmental sensitivity, low environmental capacity, strong anti-jamming capacity, weak stability, the base rock is easily to become bare when the surface vegetation is destroyed, frequent drought and waterlog are easy to happen in the area and so on. It is a kind of land phenomenon specially seen in the carbonate rock areas, so the area is also called dissolving rock area or mountain area. There are 3 kinds of environmental systems in the karst area: first is the mountain peak-valley system, second is the mountain peak-deep depression and funnel system, third is the system with the eroded hill, mountain peaks and mountain peak-valley, shallow depression and desertification area. The outstanding issues of the agriculture development in the karst areas are now heavy desertification, serious water and soil erosion, drought, conflict between population and resources and so on. So to study and to solve the issues of the agriculture development in the area so as to reach the sustainable development is of great realistic meanings.The sustainable agriculture development model includes environmental protection agriculture model, organic agriculture model and the cycling economy model. This thesis takes Xincheng County as a case and studies its agriculture environment protection model. It studies the outcomes of the demonstration activities of sustainable agriculture which are supported by the China-Australia Technology Cooperation Karst Environmental Rehabilitation Project (KERP) implemented in Xincheng County. It puts forward a sustainable and community-based model of environment rehabilitation fits for the county, which links the degraded environment restoration with poverty alleviation. It supplies reference of the agriculture sustainable development for the model of sustainable development in the karst areas of the Xincheng County, even for the sustainable agriculture development in the south areas of China.Through investigation and analysis, the outstanding issues that karst areas of Xincheng County is facing are bad natural conditions and degraded environment, unbalance of people and land and the overload of population, single industry structure and low-level production and marketing, low level of infrastructure and difficult finance, destroyed environment caused by history, man-made and political elements, less resources and fault management. And the natural conditions, population structure, mode of production, economic conditions, local civilization, community organizations, finance and mechanism of agriculture development and so on are the important elements influence the sustainable development of the agriculture. The case study in this thesis shows that the model of "bamboo, trees and flowers on the mountains; sugar canes, grain and mulberry in the field; pigs, cows and goats in the houses; biogas in the rural houses" is a model greatly fits for the sustainable agriculture development in the karst areas. It can not only recover or rebuild the environment of the karst areas, but also increase the income of the villagers. The model has played a positive role in the agriculture development of the karst areas, which is also suitable to be extended in the areas.Through analysis, the key to the success of the sustainable development of agriculture in the Xincheng karst areas is the adoption of participatory process for planning, implementation and management. The participatory process is a process or method that makes the main bodies actively and fully involve in the development process or in the decision-making, implementation, management, benefit-sharing and so on in the development projects. The participatory process can stimulate the internal power and the enthusiasm of the villagers in participating in the agriculture development, making them better use the resources that are influencing their living and development and letting them share the rights of controlling and deciding the ways of resource application and management. It has changed the villagers' mind of "someone wants me to implement the project" into "I want to implement the project". The capacity building, community organization building and ways to let the women to fully play their roles in the rural development are also important measures to accelerate the sustainable development of the agriculture. It is found in the analysis that the main obstacles before the implementation of the sustainable agriculture development strategy for the karst areas are issues of finance problems, community organization, concept and education of the villagers, brain drain of the rural areas, faulty administration of the farmer's associations and lacking of good leaders.Therefore, in order to make the agriculture development in the karst areas more sustainable, it is suggested that more policy and fund support should be input to raise the environment protection awareness of the villagers and the education of the manpower resource, to build up new type of rural economy cooperation groups and to strengthen the capacity building training for the mentors of the new countryside building and for the staff of the township agriculture service centers, to further study and consummate the participatory process and make it adopted in the planning and the implementation of the Socialism New Countryside Building, to let the women fully play their roles in the agriculture development.