The study is aimed to identify the law of how soil property and peanut growth respond to soil and water conservation (SWC) tillage in order to provide a scientific basis for preventing soil erosion, improving soil fertility and increasing peanut yield in red soil sloping land. The impacts of three types of SWC tillage practices, namely vetiver grass hedgerows (VH), straw mulching (SM) and vetiver grass hedgerows plus straw mulching (VH+SM), on soil property and peanut yield were examined and compared with conventional tillage (CT) through a long-term located experiment in sloping land of red soil. Results showed that after five years of the experiment, VH+SM and SM treatments could still promote the growth of stem, leaf, root and fruit of its in peanut flowering and podding periods, and created significant peanut yield increments of 460.65kg/hm2 and 761.11kg/hm2 with increasing rates of 6.19% and 20.32%, respectively, compared with CT. Although VH treatment had no obvious influence on promoting peanut growth and yield, its effect on reducing erosion was remarkable, and thus its comprehensive benefit were still better than that of CT. The three SWC tillage practices all improved the chemical properties of soil to some extent compared with CT. Among them, VH+SM treatment exhibited the best performance, and increased the soil organic matter, total nitrogen and available phosphorus contents by 36.81%, 64.03%, and 43.50%, respectively. Under VH+SM tillage practice, the soil microaggregate (with diameter less than 2μm) content and the total amount of main microbial population were significantly higher than those under CT, indicating that soil physical structure and microbial activity were improved. Hence, the SWC tillage practices were fit for sustainable agricultural development in arid sloping land of red soil in South China. Especially, the combination mode of vetiver grass hedgerows plus straw mulching had outstanding effect on improving soil quality and crop yield.