Three Alternative Crops to Reduce Soil Erosion for Mountain Agriculture

One of the problems for cultivating crops in the mountainous highland is soil erosion and nutrients runoff. Alternative cropping ways were searched to reduce soil erosion and to ensure farm income in the mountainous highland agricultural region. Three edible wild plants including goatsbeard, Korean thistle, and aster, were selected to test as alternative crops to reduce soil erosion in mountain agriculture of highland area. In the first year, the soil losses from the alternative cropping were 26 to 63 percents of the soil loss from summer radish cultivated by conservation tillage with contour and plastic film mulching. The relative soil losses in the second year ranged from 2.8 to 5.5 percents in comparison with radish cultivation. Rapid surface coverage contributed to successive soil loss protection by these alternative crops. Farm net profit of these crops was greater than that of radish. Monitoring of yields of Korean thistle or aster for further experiments, however, might be necessary for economic cultivation due to yield reduction caused by consecutive production.