Sustainable Agriculture Pushing Back the

Desert
Desertification land degrading into desert is often blamed on
mismanagement and misuse of land. Local people are allegedly guilty of
over-farming, over-grazing and allowing their populations to exceed the
environments capacity.
Debates concerning natural resources often pivot on a received wisdom
about environmental change and peoples role in this process. In the case of
the environment, the received wisdom is that people invariably degrade
natural resources. Outsiders, perceiving environmental change as
degradation, blame local land-use practices.
The dominant idea about desertification has been that dryland environments
are rapidly degraded by a combination of natural and human factors.
Desertification is defined as the degradation of drylands, involving loss of
biological or economic productivity and complexity.
From the 1930s, the blame was laid largely on the land use practices of
farmers and herders, and on increasing populations. This was reinforced in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, culminating in the UN Conference on
Desertification in 1977. Some scientists were uncertain about the causes and
extent of desertification, and expressed concern at the lack of long-term data.
Despite that, the Conference ended by stating that desertification was
threatening 19% of the earths surface, and that this threat came from
increased intensity of land use, overgrazing and inappropriate irrigation,
exacerbated by drought.
Such claims were reiterated by the UN Environment Programme, which was
the driving force for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD),
which entered into force in 1996. The rationale for the Convention is that
"over 250 million people are directly affected by desertification, and some
one thousand million (or one billion) are at risk. Over the past two decades,
the problem of land degradation in dryland regions has continued to worsen".
Yet, evidence has been mounting that some of these assertions are
unfounded. Most received wisdom on desertification and land degradation
assumes an equilibrium environment with linear development. Thus,
observations of expanding desert at certain periods and certain locations are
extrapolated as ongoing, even accelerating, desertification.
For instance, work in northern Sudan that estimated the desert edge had

shifted 90-100 km southwards in 17 years, is often cited. Whilst the period

and location of the study was limited, it produced widespread understanding
that "the whole southern Saharan edge" was expanding at a rate of 6 km a
year. These results were later disproved.
In the first instance, there are in effect three related but distinct phenomena
drought, dessication and dryland degradation that have been conflated in
the term desertification. On a continuum, these have increasing time-scale
effects and decreasing potential for recovery.
In particular, drought pulses are now seen as a key driving force
of dynamic ecological systems droughts lead to variability in ecosystem
process and productivity, not its decline. And in many cases, what was
assumed as dryland degradation is actually a result of drought, and can
reverse quickly under normal rainfall. Additionally, data from dry years were
often compared with that from wet years, ignoring longer-term climatic
cycles. This led to an interpretation of a decline in productivity, rather than a
variation in the response of natural vegetation or crops to soil moisture
availability.
The new understanding is that arid and semi-arid areas are nonequilibrium environments, characterised by high levels of temporal and
spatial variability and therefore, are unpredictable and uncertain. The critical
indicator is a high coefficient of variation in rainfall (30% or more). Rainfall
doesnt follow regular patterns, at least not in the short-term, and it affects
variability of patterns and amount of vegetation.
This dynamic conception of drylands is underpinned by changes within
ecological thinking - the new ecology that have suggested that nature is in
a state of continuous change. It contests conventional ecology, which depicts
nature as tending toward stability, with notions of carrying capacity and
assumptions of a stable climax at equilibrium i.e. if the carrying capacity is
exceeded, deterioration occurs.
The new ecology also involves a conception of historical time. Land that
appears degraded may have already been that way long before farming or
grazing. Researchers might erroneously associate degraded land with
destructive human activity while knowing little of a places environmental
history.
Dynamic ecological systems mean that ecological drivers are external in
dryland environments, and hence not necessarily subject to densitydependent events. Instead, human livelihood adaptations in these
environments are very specialised; people are in reality raising meat and
crops under ecologically sound conditions.
New research reveals that in many of the poorest African countries along the

Saharas edge, in Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Kenya, integrated
farming, mixed cropping and traditional soil and water conservation methods
are increasing per capita food production several fold, keeping well ahead of
population growth.
For example, the use of sheep manure for fertiliser has allowed increased
yields for farmers in Kano, Nigeria. Additionally, planting leguminous crops
increases nutrient levels in the soil by fixing nitrogen from the air. Integration
of crops and livestock enhances nutrient cycling legumes and manure
return to the soil what crops take out.
A 4-year study in eastern Burkina Faso found that despite declining rainfall
since the late 1950s and increasing populations, there is no evidence of land
degradation connected to human activities nor a decline in food productivity.
Conversely, yields of many crops have risen. The study found no proof of soil
fertility decline over 30 years.
Farmers have not achieved environmental sustainability through a capitalintensive or high-tech path. In Burkina Faso, the increased yields of sorghum,
millet and groundnuts is hardly attributable to increased external inputs,
because these crops receive little fertiliser and are largely based on hand hoe
cultivation.
Farmers have a rich repertoire of soil and water conservation technologies,
such as crop sequencing, crop rotation, fallowing, weeding, selective clearing,
intercropping, appropriate crop & landrace selection, adapted plant spacing,
thinning, mulching, stubble grazing, weeding mounds, paddocking, household
refuse application, manure application, crop residue application and compost
pits. They use many mechanical practices too.
Perhaps more important than the practices is the selective way they are
used, which vary with different field types, allowing optimal adjustment of
limited labour and inputs to the requirements of different crops and soils. If
land becomes limited, farmers do not need to invent new management
systems; they apply these soil and water conservation practices more
intensively, and only when and where needed.
High local population densities, far from being a liability, are actually
essential for providing the necessary labour to work the land, dig terraces
and collect water in ponds for irrigation, and to control weeds, tend fields,
feed animals and spread manure. As population densities increase, farmers
intensify their cooperation systems, grouping to tend each others fields at
busy periods, lending and borrowing land, livestock and equipment, and
swapping seed varieties.
People thus invest heavily in creating and maintaining social networks, such
as land networks, labour networks, womens natal networks, cattle networks,

technology networks and cash networks.

Furthermore, in Maradi district in southern Niger, where repeated droughts
have wrought environmental damage, farmers have been fighting back, and
have actually reversed desertification. This is also true of Machakos (renamed
Makueni) district in Kenya. In the 1930s, British colonial scientists condemned
the eroding, bare hills of the drought-prone area to environmental oblivion.
This narrative was consistently reproduced in the 1950s and 1970s. Yet, while
there have been droughts, the hills are greener, less eroded and more
productive today than before, despite a fivefold population increase. The local
Akamba people had responded to the droughts by switching from herding
cattle to settled farming, giving them incentive to work the land effectively.
"This is no high-tech breakthrough, nor a result of Western aid programmes".
A major reason for the overestimation of land degradation is the
underestimation of local farmers abilities.
This demonstrates the importance of relying and building on local peoples
knowledge and practices. Many external interventions have usurped and
undermined local systems of decision-making and resource management. Its
time to turn the received wisdom on its head, and learn from local
communities, instead of blaming them wholesale for land degradation.
In light of all this evidence, a new realism now exists about desertification,
which gives climatic variation equal footing with human activities, as a cause.
The UNCCD now takes care to point out the reversibility of drought, the
influence of climatic variation, and recognises that the causes of
desertification are complex, as is the human-environment relationship.
Policies need to appreciate the inherent uncertainty in science. Opportunistic
management, i.e. seizing opportunities to evade problems, working within
complex systems, adapting to instability and exploiting environmental
instability, is needed for dynamic ecosystems.
Dynamic ecological theory does not replace conventional theory but is more
appropriate in some contexts, such as in dryland ecosystems. Environmental
complexity doesnt lend itself to simple, linear or reductionist technological
fixes. Ecosystems are dynamic wholes and sustainable agriculture works in
tandem with these (see Box), as local farmers in Africa are showing.
Sustainable agriculture
makes best use of natures goods and services by
integrating natural, regenerative processes e.g. nutrient
cycling, nitrogen fixation, soil regeneration and natural
enemies of pests

minimises non-renewable inputs (pesticides and

fertilisers) that damage the environment or harm human
health

relies on the knowledge and skills of farmers

promotes and protects social capital - peoples

capacities to work together to solve common management
problems

depends on locally-adapted practices to innovate in the

face of uncertainty

contributes to public goods, such as clean water,

wildlife, carbon sequestration in soils, flood protection and
landscape quality