The integrity of eco-environment in Inner Mongolia grassland plays a significant role in maintaining regional ecosystem and socio-economic development. Furthermore, it is closely related to the eco-balance of the nation as a whole as well as social stability of the region. However, since the late 20th century, grassland in Inner Mongolia has plunged into an ecological crisis with increasingly severe grassland deterioration over the years. This situation has further imposed a negative impact on socio-economic development and the inhabitants’ livelihoods within the region. In this paper, the economic development of livestock farming along with agricultural policies has been reviewed in detail since the establishment of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Permanent settlement of nomadic herders and privatization of collective grasslands has disrupted traditional rotational herding where sufficient rest period and space were provided for the regrowth of plant life. It has also led to deviations from ecologically virtuous cycles in terms of grassland utilization. Moreover, expanding cultivation of grassland has taken its toll on the grassland plants, destroying the sustainability of local ecosystem. At the same time, cultivation of grassland with poor ecosystem brings up the lurking issue of sustaining crop security for the nation in the long run. Therefore, from an ecosystem sustainability standpoint, it is inevitable for us to reevaluate and readjust current Land-use policies implemented across the Inner Mongolia region.

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Otindag Sandy Land, located in the Xilingol grassland in Inner Mongolia, exemplifies the significant increase in grassland degradation in recent years, which has drawn attention as a source of dust storms in the Beijing-Tianjin area. This study carried out a detailed investigation in order to clarify the vegetation changes and their causes. First, the normalized difference vegetation index （NDVI） during the growing season（April to October）, derived from long-term satellite data sets （AVHRR/GIMMS ［1981-2006］ and MODIS/TERRA ［2000-2014］）, was used to estimate changes in the amount of vegetation. The April-October integrated NDVI value as an indicator of annual vegetation amount was used to examine the vegetation temporal-spatial change in interannual variability and long-term change. Then, using the Otindag Sandy Land temperature and precipitation data within 10 observation points, we examined their impact on the variation of NDVI values. We took April-October cumulative NDVI values as purpose variables and temperatures and precipitation as explanatory variables, and subjected them to multiple regression analysis. Finally, a change in livestock numbers as well as the anthropogenic impact of afforestation in Xinlinhaote were examined to ascertain their effects on NDVI values.The results revealed that the NDVI change did not present a clear increase and decrease tendency during the 34-year period, but a low value tendency was seen after 2003. The multiple correlation coefficient R of the NDVI measured value, and the predicted value was very high at 0.91. The effects of livestock were not directly related to the interannual vegetation variance;however, when drought occurred during a cattle population increase, it revealed that the vegetation amount decreased sharply.

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We aim at clarifying land environmental condition on the basis of the intensity of predominating geomorphic agents, and figuring out current agricultural management and acceptance process of environmental policies, in the eastern margin of the Ulan buh Desert. Geomorphologically, aeolian dune area continues to expand since about 8 ka, when the youngest fluvial terrace surface emerged along the Yellow River, and migrating rate of the dune front is estimated to be approximately 10^-1-10⁰ m/yr during the past several thousand years, and 10⁰-10¹ m/yr in places since the 1960s. Because the terrace surface was almost entirely embedded under aeolian sand layer as a result of the dune expansion, the agricultural lands are exclusively located on the flood plain, where groundwater level is extremely shallow and topsoil salinization tends to occur.
In the mid-1990s, people began to introduce sunflower production in the study area, because of its higher cashability and tolerance for dryness, and it became a new major income source, instead of the former stock farming, affected by the shrinkage and disappearance of grassland on account of the dune expansion. Due to continuous cultivation of the sunflower, they are in need of keeping a balance on land use, between risks in environmental resource, namely, decline of yield and soil fertility, disease and insect damages, overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and salinization, and farmland maintenance by winter-flooding in sunflower fields;however, the balance currently seems to be lost by degrees. Grazing prohibition implemented as one of environmental policies, had stronger characteristics of being income security, and therefore, in order to maintain the sustainability of environmental resources, operation of the policy taken into account both land environmental condition and people’s livelihood strategy, should be necessary.

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We sought to clarify the farming methods and implementation of environmental policies by inhabitants of the Bāyàn xǐguì settlement on the eastern margin of the Ulan Buh Desert.
In this settlement, households of the Hui people constitute the majority. Hui people moved into this settlement after the original pastoralist Mongolian inhabitants moved to another area. The primary crop of the settlement is currently sunflowers, which are cultivated on the riverbanks of the Yellow River. New dikes constructed along the river in around 2000 made it possible to avoid the risk of flooding and facilitate sunflower production.
The number of households in the settlement has increased as the children have become independent and constructed their own houses. When the parent generation retires, their children succeed their rights to the farmland. In this way, each generation expands the area under sunflower production. Despite decreases in yield and soil fertility due to salinization, sunflower cultivation generates high levels of income and profit. Consequently, compared to other rural areas of Inner Mongolia, the average household income in the village is relatively high. Similarly, unlike other rural areas where young people migrate to urban areas in order to increase their income, the households in this settlement are able to purchase passenger cars, afford newly built houses, and generally improve their living standards.

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In this study, the author intended to typify the organizational form of the Farmer’s Professional Associations in the Inner Mongolia, and to clarify their problems for future development. To be specific, the study analyzed the details of the formation of the association to identify the reason for its organization, and examined linkages among individual actors in the association. Consequently, the details of its formation indicated that 1） the association was organized to strengthen farmers’ ability to sell agricultural and stock farm products, that 2） subsidies from the Chinese government had directly triggered the formation, and that 3） the organizational form of the association was vertical rather than horizontal. While showing signs that it would grow into a kind of cooperative, the Farmer’s Professional Association could actually be said to be in transition, experiencing rapid organization by leading enterprises and local merchants both in agriculture and stock-farming.

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