Establish the pastoral agriculture system for desertification control in Minqin

Process and control of desertification in Minqin County is one of principal models in China and even in the world. In history, there is an obvious one to one correspondence between acceleration of land desertification and large scale land reclamation, which mainly results from competition and integration of specialized animal production (grazing) and specialized crop production (planting). Based on the spot investigations, analysis of literatures and field experiments, three main problems of current agriculture in Minqin County are summarized as follows: 1) deterioration of environment, mainly including the critical shortage of aboveground water with flow break of Shiyang River, dramatic decline of water table and deterioration of ground water quality; 2) unreasonable planting structure of crop production, mainly including poor crop biodiversity, indiscriminately profit seeking without limitation of water resource utilization and high risk of desertification and the frequent replacement of cash crops; 3) low level of technical support to agroecosystem, including no extension of water saving irrigation, undesirable effects of some high techniques, deficient integration of agricultural systems between desert area and oasis area, unsystematic coordination among all kinds of desertification control measures. Consequently, establishment of pastoral agriculture systems could play a key role in control of desertification in Minqin County through adaptively integrating crop production with livestock production in the light of ecological, productive and economic principles of agricultural structure optimization.