Taking super hybrid rice Y-liangyou 1, and hybrid rice Xianyou  63 and conventional rice Huanghuazhan as test materials, a field experiment was conducted in Changsha City of Hunan Province in 2011 and 2012 to investigate the effects of ridge & terraced ecological rice farming (RT) and bed ecological rice farming (B) on rice grain yield and photosynthetic characteristics. Compared with conventional rice farming (CK), yield of Y-liangyou 1 in the RT was increased significantly by 28.7%, the effective panicles per unit area and spikelets per panicle were increased by 16.1% and 6.8%, respectively. Yields of Xianyou 63 and Huanghuazhan in the RT and B were 24.3% and 19.7%, 12.0% and 16.2% higher than those of CK, respectively. Leaf area index, dry matter accumulation before and after fullheading, total dry matter accumulation of Y-liangyou 1 in the RT was higher than that of CK. Number of spikelets/leaf area, number of filled grains/leaf area, grain mass/leaf area of Y-liangyou 1 in the RT were 8.1%, 14.8% and 15.8% higher than those of CK, respectively, the photosynthetic potential was increased by 32.2% while the net assimilation rate was declined by 9.3%.