Today many of the terraces Zuitou’s farmers hacked out of the loess are reverting to nature. In what locals call the “3-3-3” system, farmers replant one-third of their land—the steepest, most erosion-prone slopes—with grass and trees, natural barriers to erosion. They cover another third of the land with harvestable orchards. The final third, mainly plots on the gully floor that have been enriched by earlier erosion, is cropped intensively. By concentrating their limited supplies of fertilizer on that land, farmers can raise yields enough to make up for the land they have sacrificed—that’s the
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