Abstract
Since Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (IAHS) were launched by the FAO to protect the sustainable traditional agricultural systems around the world, their conservation has become a new difficult issue under the context of urbanization. Farmers in IAHS sites giving up small-scale traditional farming due to their low economic benefit and high labor intensity are considered as the main cause hindering effective conservation of these heritages. This study takes the Kuancheng traditional chestnut cultivation system (KTCCS) in northern China as a case to assess its economic and socio-cultural sustainability. Based on questionnaires and interviews, this study found that: the traditional ecological farming methods were still used by local farming households to plant chestnut trees; and most farmers support IAHS conservation. KTCCS performs economic and socio-cultural sustainability. For a household, the labor productivity of chestnut cultivation was 1.33 times that of their non-farm jobs because of the low labor input of chestnut cultivation. Farmers widely consider they live in a harmonious social environment but are lower than other households in economic status. Most farmers still lack an understanding of indigenous traditional knowledge and cultures. In the future, secondary and tertiary industries should be developed to provide farmers with employment opportunities in their hometowns for protecting KTCCS.
Highlights
With the rapid development of agricultural technologies and the market-oriented economy, traditional agricultural systems are disappearing around the world [1,2]
This study took Kuancheng traditional chestnut cultivation system (KTCCS) as a case to analyze its sustainability from the perspective of the economy and socio-culture
This study examined the current situation of chestnut production, farmers’ attitude to chestnut cultivation, and the main influence factors
Summary
With the rapid development of agricultural technologies and the market-oriented economy, traditional agricultural systems are disappearing around the world [1,2]. The merits of traditional agriculture have been receiving attention [4,5,6]. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) initiated the Global Important Agricultural Heritage. System (GIAHS) project in 2002 for protecting the outstanding traditional agricultural systems with a long history in the world [7,8]. Traditional agriculture has attracted the interest of researchers and governments [9,10]. The governments of China, South Korea, and Japan in East Asia have launched the National Important Agricultural
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