Integration of farmers' knowledge and perception with researchers' knowledge is important for planning resource-conserving technologies. In many places in the world, farmer participation has been shown to be essential in the planning of sustainable land management. The findings of a participatory approach (PA) for integrated conservation planning in the Danangou catchment—a small catchment situated in the heart of Loess Plateau—are presented in this paper. The work was carried out by an interdisciplinary team during the period 1997–2000. The PA is an interactive learning process between local farmers and researchers. The process was facilitated by several visualisation and diagramming methods. This formed part of an integrated conservation planning approach, where three tools including PA, land evaluation and soil erosion modelling were combined within the entire conservation planning process. The Danangou catchment is characterised by its distribution of cropping systems on all degrees of slope to meet the food needs of the villagers. Farmers' criteria on land suitability, including slope aspect and soil workability, were evaluated. Farmers approved several biological and physical conservative measures, which provided one of the important bases for formulating different land use scenarios (LU scenarios). The factors influencing farmers in choosing different LU scenarios were analysed, including (1) current household economy in relation to production from the land; and (2) prediction of changes in the household economy due to different LU scenarios. The farmers' vision on implementation of the LU scenarios, i.e. gradually converting cropping land, conforms well with the plans of the local government. However, due to the poor living standard and lack of off-farm employment, any effort to improve land use towards more sustainable practices seemed to be difficult to implement without support from the government in terms of food, seedlings and also sources of employment for the villagers. The strategy for conversion work in connection with the central government policy on re-greening the Loess Plateau must focus first on areas where off-farm activities are available or potentially available. A diversity of conservation alternatives was found to meet the needs of different farmers' groups. It is recommended that alternatives be developed by an active collaboration between farmers, extensionists and researchers.