Characteristics of Chinese agro-ethics in mountain agriculture and their values in this era

Mountain agriculture supports 1/3 of the total population in China and plays a very important role in eco-environmental protection and rural development. Mountain agro-ethics refers to the moral understanding between persons, between humans and the society, between the humans and living environments, as well as the cohesion between agriculture production systems and social-ecological systems. In the long history of agricultural production practices, mountain-dwelling people have developed the mountain agro-ethics with features of time suitability, space suitability, order degree, and nature governance, which have guided the sustainability of mountain agriculture and even all kinds of agriculture. In the current process of ecological civilization construction in mountainous regions in China, the mountain agro-ethics should be integrated with the modern scientific technologies and traditional agricultural technologies. The local resources based eco-agriculture that combines crop plantation and animal husbandry should be developed following the rules of agro-ethics, i.e., “integration, coordination, recycling and regrowth”, so as to promote the sustainable development of productive and high-quality agriculture as well as a beneficent cycle of social-ecological systems through the rational agricultural production paradigm in mountainous regions.