Abstract: Exploring the influencing factors of farmers' livelihood in Qinba Mountain of Gansu Province not only helps to improve the living conditions of farmers, but diversifies their living modes. This paper takes Wenxian County, Kangxian County and Xihe County as examples to find out farmers' status of livelihood capital by questionnaire survey, and analyze the typical factors with binary logistic model. The results show as follows:(1) The natural environment shows great vulnerability for the farmers with traditional livelihood as the arable land area is very small with serious fragmentation.(2) In the study area, the choice of farmers' living modes is relatively narrow, only two modes can be choose, which is agriculture or non-agriculture. (3) The agricultural acreage and production tools have obvious influence on the choice of living mode of agricultural single-type farmers, but not significant. (4) The key factors such as laborers' education degree, a carder in a family and health condition determine the transformation of farmers from agricultural single type to non-agricultural type. (5) Family fixed capital, access to credit opportunities and cash income also promote farmers transformation from agricultural single type to non-agricultural type.