To alleviate environmental challenges, such as erosion, desertification, and biodiversity loss, and to reduce rural poverty and promote agricultural restructuring, the Chinese government launched the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) in the late 1990s.The objectives of this paper are to assess its impacts on land use, erosion control, agricultural productivity, and rural livelihood in the Loess Plateau region of China.The land-use and soil erosion changes are detected from satellite images and based on processing modeling, whereas the productivity and livelihood changes are derived from household survey data and econometric analysis.Our results show that the SLCP, if effectively implemented, has reduced farming on sloping cropland and increased forest and grass covers, and thus reduced soil erosion.At the same time, while income of local participants has increased and a large number of farming and herding laborers has been transferred to off-farm and/or off-community sectors, the agricultural productivity has grown so as to make the production decline mildly.However, the effectiveness of the SLCP implementation has much to do with the local intensity of participation program, government capability, and economic condition.