The difficulties and opportunities for traditional agrarian culture on the Loess Plateau

Cultivatingagriculture was a stage of production between the nomadic agriculture and the modern agriculture. As far as Loess Plateau was concerned, nomadic culture emerged first then followed by agrarian culture. The two cultures coexisted for a long time and alternately took over the dominate position. Finally the agrarian culture settled down firmly on the Loess Plateau with the farming agriculture getting stabilized after undergoing 11 stages and 8 changes during thousands of years. But it had been in a difficult situation since its environment has changed, which affected the foundations favorable to the agrarian culture for such a long time. Grasslandagriculture had advantages in soil fertility maintaining, fertilizer saving, water and heat saving and profit promoting in comparison with cultivatingagriculture. Therefore, shifting from cultivatingagriculture to grasslandagriculture was an inevitable historical tendency, which may also be regarded as a revival of the agricultural culture in Zhou Tsutime. It was this revival that provided a necessary condition for conversion of cultivatingagriculture to grassland agriculture.