Dingxi prefecture of Gansu Province's development of rainwater collection and water-saving irrigation to combat the arid environment

Dingxi prefecture is located in foothill of the Loess Plateau, where the climate is arid or half-arid. Due to the intrinsic atrocious eco-environment, Dingxi prefecture has been facing the vicious circle of eco-environmental vulnerability and poverty in a long time. At the same time, in the long-time practice, Dingxi has taken the rainwater collection and water-saving irrigation as the link of improving eco-environment and increasing field's productivity, and energetically developed high-yielding ecological agriculture, which offered a new way for solving the problem of agricultural development in the arid or half-arid region. This paper intensively studied the content including engineering system, technological system and social economic systems, and etc), the composite mode of rainwater collection and utilization in different landforms (such as in the Court of a farm-house, along a small valley, or in the field), and the economic, social and ecological benefit of developing ecological agriculture in Dingxi prefecture, whose marked characteristic is rainwater-collection and water-saving irrigation and high-yielding. In the end, finding a solution to the existing problems, the author put forward some countermeasure, aiming at offering scientific reference for the same region to develop ecological agriculture. Key words: Dingxi prefecture, Rainwater collection, Water-saving irrigation Ecological agriculture