ABSTRACT
Although 73.4 per cent of the total arable land under cultivation is found in the Southern Mountains Region, it lags far behind the Yellow River Irrigated Region in agricultural development. The production system in the south is based on dryland agriculture with low crop yield-in nine years out of ten, the harvest is very poor [Chen, 1995:514]—and extensive, sedentary livestock farming. A total of 81.2 per cent of all irrigated land can be found in the Yellow River Irrigated Region where 74.9 per cent of Ningxia’s total grain output is produced [NNTZH 1949-1997, 1998:3, 33]. This uneven production pattern is also reflected in the income distribution. Bearing in mind that Ningxia, in terms of rural net income per capita, in a national comparison always ranked in the lowest quarter nationally-it even ranked third lowest in 1995 with 998.75 Renminbi (hereafter Rmb) after Shaanxi with 962.89 Rmb and Gansu with 880.34 Rmb 10 —it can be suspected that the rural population in the Southern Mountains Region is relatively poor. In fact, the rural net income per capita in that region is only fraction of what a person in a rural area in the northern part of Ningxia earns.
