Assessing the Achievements and Problems of Rural Resource Management Programs in Western China: A Case Study from Gansu Province

irrigation. The idea was to build 100 m of catchment area, and two concrete water storage tanks and irrigate one mu (1/15 hectare) of courtyard land devoted to cash crop production. In practice, the 1-2-1 program focused on building water tanks for household use, with roofs and courtyards serving as the principal catchment surfaces that channel water into the tank. County and township governments together with county agricultural extension bureaus provided the concrete needed for water tank construction, with villagers supplying the sand and labor. Since 1997, dissemination efforts in Gansu have shifted to include rainwater harvesting agriculture, which aims to provide limited irrigation of crops, particularly grain, vegetables and fruit trees. Water tanks have been built adjacent to fields, with roads, hillsides and concrete surfaces serving as catchments. Precipitation stored during the previous fall and winter supplies enough water to irrigate crops during the critical period before the arrival of the summer rains. Supplemental irrigation via rainwater harvesting has led to substantial increases in yields of grain crops (e.g., corn and wheat) and fruit trees (e.g., apple, pear, and peach) in some localities (Li et al., 1995; Gao and Zhu, 1996). It has also facilitated the commercial production of vegetables in greenhouses, providing farmers with an alternative source of income. The implementation of rainwater harvesting in Gansu has led other northwestern provinces such as Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia to adopt similar programs aimed at disseminating rainwater harvesting for household and agricultural use. On the whole, the 1-2-1 program has been quite successful. It has basically solved the drinking water problems of more than a million people in semi-arid rural areas of Gansu. This is a major achievement, and has led to a dramatic improvement in the living standards of rural residents. The construction of water tanks in the courtyards of rural homes has eliminated the need to spend time and energy hauling water from distant sources, as farmers were forced to do in the past. This has freed up labor for other activities, such as the expansion of Assessing the Achievements and Problems of Rural Resource Management Programs in Western China: A Case Study from Gansu Province