OBSTACLES TO ADOPTION OF SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION PRACTICES IN CENTRAL AFRICA.

ABSTRACT.

In spite of the great advances made in Central Africa towards understanding the cause effect relationships governing soil  erosion and the continued improvement of conservation technologies over the last 70 years, efforts by governments and NGOs to introduce more advanced or more appropriate conservation methods into the smallholder sector are failing dismally.

In addition, although colonial governments succeeded in ensuring that large tracts of the region's arable lands were protected by mechanical conservation works, these are now breaking down through neglect and new lands are not being protected at all.

 Although the reasons for the unpopularity of conservation programmes are many and varied this paper identifies four areas which greatly contribute to the lack of success.

Introduction.

Research and field experience in Central Africa over the last 70 years has greatly improved understanding of the physical processes initiating rainfall erosion and the methods of protecting arable lands. The late 1920s saw the introduction into the region of programmes of mechanical conservation designed to control rill and gully erosion. The most common methods of mechanical protection included contour ridge layouts or bunds, directional ridging and, to a lesser degree, bench terracing. Initially these methods were applied in commercial farming areas and were gradually introduced into the smallholder sector over the next 30 years. The early 1970s saw this focus broadened with research into minimum and zero tillage systems designed to control sheet erosion between the contour ridges (bunds) as well as providing other practical benefits. Such techniques as wheeltrack planting, rough tillage, ripping into mulch and rip &ªdisk  tillage were researched and extended to commercial farmers. During the 1980s, work began on developing methods of controlling sheet erosion on arable lands in the smallholder sector. Among this new generation of tillage systems were rip on row, no till tied ridging and no till strip cropping. The period from 1990/2000 was characterised by a growing awareness of the need to introduce low external input agriculture into the smallholder sector and for a more holistic approach to conservation. Thus such initiatives as permaculture, organic farming, agroforestry, natural methods of pest control, fodder banks and the integration of animals into the cropping programmes began to be added to conservation programmes.

Nevertheless, in spite of all these innovative developments in conservation technologies, offering farmers the "basketful of  choices" recommended by extension specialists, voluntary uptake of conservation methodologies has been appalling low throughout Central Africa.

The content of this paper will focus on the reasons for low adoption of conservation technologies by the smallholder sector. In this context, smallholder farming is characterised by subsistence farmers living predominantly in the semi arid regions of Central Africa. In contradistinction to the simplified production style resourceªrich farming of the commercial farming sector, smallholder farming is much more complex and operates within severe economic and social constraints. Although the reasons for poor uptake of conservation technologies are many and varied, the following shortcomings, singly and in combination, are considered to be major obstacles to the success of conservation programmes.

* Lack of government support.

* Incorrect mode of technology development and transfer.

* Farmer perceptions and socio economic constraints.

* Inappropriate aid.

1. Lack Of Government Support.

The most common conservation methods found in the region are  contour ridges or bunds. These open ditches are onerous to construct but colonial governments insisted that all lands in the smallholder sectors should be protected by them. The function of these structures were not usually explained satisfactorily to the people and defaulters could have their right to cultivate taken away or could be imprisoned. The rising nationalist movements took advantage of the unpopularity of conservation works and opposed them, encouraging local people to destroy them. Most grazing management schemes also failed during this turbulent period.

On coming to power, conservation continued to be unpopular with the masses and an embarrassment to the new nationalist governments who found it difficult to explain to people why they should now conserve their land.

In recent times new conservation technologies have been developed with the aim of protecting from sheet erosion the land lying  between the contour ridges. Since research in the region had shown sheet erosion to be a major threat to cropland, a supportive response from the authorities could reasonably have been expected. Instead these new conservation measures have received little or no support from government ministries and their field staff.

The reasons for this are many and vary in importance from country to country. Conservation remains a dirty word over much of Central Africa and extension staff set aside little time for this aspect of their duties, preferring to concentrate on the contentious activity of promoting production methods or on  drought relief programmes. Aid programmes are also more popular among government staff particularly where the perks are substantial. It is true too that most ministries in the region are short of funds, transport and trained staff. Morale has never been lower. Even in the good times, though, governments have always preferred to invest funds in short term high return production projects rather than in long term conservation programmes.

2. Incorrect Mode of Technology Development & Transfer.

During the colonial period the western model of technology development and transfer, referred to as "top down", was introduced into the colonies. The main characteristic of this approach is that the direction of movement of new knowledge is from research to the extension services and on to the farmer. In recent times it has been found that the top down approach has  worked reasonably well in commercial agriculture with its simplified factory style production approach; but has been a total failure when applied to the complex situations of the resource poor traditional peasant farmer. This could account for the very low rate of adoption of researched technologies (estimated to be around 5% only) by traditional smallholder farmers.

The alternative to top down technology transfer is called "bottom up". In its purest form, bottom up development is entirely farmer driven. The farmers develop the technology, and evaluate and extend it to other farmers. The role of the extension services in this scenario is one of minimal interference, their function being mainly to motivate and mobilise communities, to assist in the spread of successful farmer innovations and to inform central research of farmer  needs. Thus the role of research becomes principally that of solving farmer presented problems.

Naturally, the change from bottom up to top down requires the relatively well educated government personnel in research and extension to give up a great deal of power to the very people they habitually regard as backward. It is, perhaps, a leap too great for them to take. The habit of telling the "illiterate peasant" what to do is still too deeply engrained. At least it would seem so, for, instead of embracing the new philosophy wholeheartedly, government agencies have brought in methods which they claim are bottom up or participatory but which, in reality, have been introduced merely to improve the adoption rate of the top down process.

One of the first government initiatives towards engaging in soªcalled "participatory" approaches was the development of Farming Systems Research (FSR) teams. Initially, this meant little change in the usual centralised on station research but the researchers used data collected during Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) surveys to improve the applicability of the research undertaken and to provide information which would increase the establishment's chances of "selling" the developed technologies to smallholders. The process thus remained essentially top down and adoption rates remained disappointingly low.

Blaming the marked lack of take up upon the inaccuracy of the data collected by specialist teams in Rapid Rural Appraisal surveys, which were rapid and skimpy in the extreme, FSR teams changed to the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) approach of data collection. The idea behind this type of survey was to involve communities in the actual data collection in the hope that information on farmer needs would be more accurate and communities would feel part of the project and be more committed to practising the developed technologies. About the same time, on farm research came into vogue. It was not long, however, before social scientists were pointing out that PRA did not create a genuine partnership nor did it empower people sufficiently to ensure project sustainability nor even to establish on going community development once the FSR team had withdrawn from the area.

Only one purely bottom up approach has been used in Central Africa. It was called Training For Transformation (TFT). TFT was not designed to assist agricultural development but was initiated as a social tool to overcome the lack of self respect, selfªconfidence  and self reliance of rural people. The method of TFT was developed by two women in Kenya in 1974. Apart from the initial training given by these women to a handful of rural farmers, there was no further specialist involvement. Yet, by 1982, 400 community leaders had been trained in the methodology and were in the process of training a further 50 000 rural households. Unfortunately for TFT, an outcome of the programme was that communities began to question political decisions. This was not acceptable to the politicians and TFT was hastily banned. Although Zimbabwe initially agreed to apply TFT, and hundreds of the handbooks were ready for distribution in 1994, they were never released by the responsible ministry.

It seems, therefore, that true bottom up development and transfer of technology is unlikely to find favour in Central Africa among technocrats and politicians in the immediate future. These powerful groups clearly perceive such approaches to be a threat to their preferential positions...and quite rightly so. On the other hand, there is growing awareness among NGO staff in particular that no progress will be made until rural communities are truly empowered to take charge of their own lives and over development and conservation programmes.

3. Farmer Perceptions & Socio economic Constraints.

Farmer expectations.

For generations, high input output commercial farming has been promoted by government and the agribusiness as the ideal model for the future. These organisations consistently and repeatedly promise smallholders that they too can become successful commercial farmers by adopting this model. Unfortunately this is simply rhetoric and is not an achievable goal. The success of high external input farming depends on a series of conditions being present at the same time: optimal soil fertility, optimal soil moisture, adequate finance, sound cash flow, high levels of management, assured markets and guaranteed prices, most of which are deficient in the smallholder sector. As a consequence of the promotion of inappropriate high input technologies, yields of the staple food in the region, maize, are declining steadily, financial positions are worsening and household food security is deteriorating. Nevertheless, politicians and public figures continue to boost subsistence farmer expectations that one day, by the adoption of high external input technologies, they will become successful commercial farmers. One of the undesirable consequences of this misdirection is that many smallholders use their meagre resources to purchase as much of a high input package as possible, while other important conditions fall far short of what is required to achieve optimal yields. Thus, scarce resources are used much less effectively that they could be and, in the face of diminished returns, scarce resources become even scarcer than before.

Community perceptions.

Sociological surveys carried out in the region have pointed to a lack of understanding of cause effect relationships in traditional societies. Among the elderly, land degradation is often attributed to witchcraft or to the spirits punishing society for deviating from traditional customs. On the other hand children born into a degraded environment have little perception of its undegraded potential and often do not appreciate that any change has taken place in the availability of natural resources and in the productivity of the land. When made aware that vast changes have taken place within one or two generations, the young are inclined to attribute the degradation and loss of productivity to natural causes such as "poor rains" and to discount poor land husbandry as a principal cause. Often, communal societies resent any of their members "stepping out of line" and seek ways of applying pressure on those that do. The pressure is often covert, taking the form of witchcraft or driving cattle onto the cooperating farmer's field during the night. Projects involving cohesive groups such as church or women's clubs later proved to be much more successful in resisting this form of peer pressure. Nevertheless, surveys continued to show that fear of being single out is a major reasonfor communal people being reluctant to take part in conservation programmes.

Other factors.

Generally, even the much vaunted on farm approach has met with little success as a means of conducting research or as a springboard for conservation programmes. The early generation of on farm trials, intending to assess the merits of a few different initiatives, often foundered because farmers did not apply consistent management levels to each of the treatments being tried on his farm. More often than not the participating farmer would divert all the inputs (usually State provided) on to his favoured treatment and completely neglect the rest. In recent years government staff in the region have become considerably confused over the correct functions of on farm trials, often using "trials" as "demonstrations". Clearly, a "trial" is a treatment still in the investigative stage whereas a "demonstration" is a treatment that has been selected for general adoption. Using trails as demonstrations has often resulted in farmers adopting treatments which, by the time the trail has run its course, have proven to be unsuitable for dissemination. The construction of conservation works (storm drains, contours, ridges, terraces etc) often involve heavy work but a general trend throughout the region is for the young people and male heads of households to migrate from rural communities to seek employment in the towns or on commercial farms. This loss of the most able sections of the community continues to have a strong negative impact on conservation programmes. Disease is now impacting to a great extent on conservation programmes and the situation is expected to worsen rapidly in the coming devades. AIDS in particular has made rapid inroads into Africa and is expected to annihilate about 45% of the active adult population within the next 10 15 years, leaving a vast labour vacuum in the smallholder sector. The gap in the age structure of rural communities is already very apparent with the very elderly taking the brunt of providing for millions of AIDS orphans. The resultant lack of labour is further stretching the already limited natural resources of the region, leading to increased rates of deforestation, loss of biodiversity and land degradation.

4. Inappropriate Aid.

Development agencies have found that rural communities are resistant to agenda that do not match their perceived priorities. Though loss of soil and water through excessive sheet erosion may be severely limiting agricultural output in the poorest areas, conservation programmes will be low on the priority list when crops fail. In these circumstances drought relief programmes take precedence. Unfortunately the drought relief programmes are often so badly  conceived that even though they often achieve their primary goal of preventing immediate loss of life through starvation, they invariably fall short of achieving their secondary goal of ensuring future food security. In fact drought relief programmes in Central Africa are undermining the food security of the people and exposing them to even greater risk of crop failure in the future. A typical scenario is as follows. The crops fail during a 1 in 20 year drought. Aid is rushed into the area in the form of food followed by drought relief packs containing the basics for planting the next crop (seed and fertiliser). Being Africa, the food supplied is always maize meal and the main seed supplied in drought packs is hybrid maize seed which farmers are duped into believing will give them higher yields. This combination of feeding starving people with maize meal and providing them with maize seed to plant with, creates a maizeªand  aid dependency. A strong preference for the taste of maize meal is induced and the provision of free maize seed ensures that it becomes the main crop of the area. People begin to plant maize in preference to their traditional drought resistant crops, the harvest then begins to fail more often and people become even more dependent on aid. Whereas the necessity to provide food aid was rare in days gone by, the maize harvest now fails every four years. That is a worrying enough trend, but even worse than that is the growing phenomenon of people not planting at all and demanding food aid every year simply because they have become dependent upon aid. The problem can quite be easily solved by providing the recipients with food relief and with planting seed appropriate to that particular ecological zone. But governments have not adjusted the programmes to deal with these obvious shortfalls, generating the suspicion that food shortages suit the political party in power as aid can buy votes. Whether this is true or not, conservation programmes have little chance of interesting people who have no crops whatever the reason behind it. It is perhaps understandable that Emergency Aid programmes can lead to difficulties of all sorts but, unfortunately, Development Aid is not without its troubles either. The main problem arises from well meaning NGOs attempting to do too much for the recipient community. The end result is that the aid succeeds only in undermining the self reliance and self respect of the people it is supposed to be assisting. Aid programmes should be designed to ensure that effort is apportioned between the donor and the recipient; and withdrawn rapidly if the benefitting community does not pull its weight. People who have lost the will to fend for themselves are unlikely to engage in the sort of participatory conservation programmes now in vogue.