Soil Sustainability

Understanding Farmers' Behavior:

In this topic the focus is on farmers, who, being small or big, are the ones who decide, day in day out, what to do with their soil. How do they make their decisions? Which factors play a role? And very important: what role can we, being so interested in sustainable soil management, play to motivate farmers to manage their land in a sustainable way? First I want to talk about perception; defined as “the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted”. Perception in our case refers to views about soil threats and soil health: to what extent do farmers perceive what is happening to their land? If the land is eroding or degraded, soil scientists immediately ask: why does the farmer not do something about it? Is he (or she!) not aware about losing the land, don’t they perceive the erosion signs? But let’s now stand in the shoes of the farmer, and see how they perceive it. I’ll give you an example from a study in Ethiopia in four different villages in the Central Rift Valley.

It is a highly degraded area, and taking measures to control soil erosion is a must to safeguard this land from total degradation. However, few farmers implement adequate measures. Why? The study shows that the large majority of farmers actually do perceive water erosion as a problem! However, only half of these farmers invest in measures to control water erosion. And even smaller is the percentage of land protected against water erosion. Here we come to one of the most challenging aspects of sustainable soil management: the adoption by farmers of conservation practices.

Adoption studies show that farmers are particularly reluctant to adopt practices that do not generate quick wins or short-term benefits. An example of this is stone bunds, terraces, or technologies which require significant investments. Understanding farmers’ behaviour and their reasons to adopt – or not adopt - conservation practices is very important: it can inform our strategies for sustainable land management. Looking more closely at adoption of conservation practices by farmers, there is enormous similarity with the adoption of innovations in general, not only by farmers but also by you and me. Here you see the famous curve for the adoption of innovations as developed by Everett Rogers in 1962.

It shows that there is only a small group of innovators and early adopters, people who try and adopt new things eagerly. After them come the early and later majority, and a small group of laggards who adopt innovations after all the others have done so. Just think about the smartphone: where are you on this curve? For sure you can think of early adopters and laggards in your own surroundings! With the adoption of conservation practices it is the same, and even more complicated. With a smartphone you can decide to buy one or not.

In the adoption process there are three phases: First there is the acceptance phase, which starts with the awareness and perception that there is a problem. This is followed by the decision to undertake measures, and eventually leads to the investment in a first trial of a certain measure. Then comes the actual adoption phase, whereby efforts or investments are made (in capital and labor) to implement conservation measures on more than trial basis. And finally there is the third phase of continued use (or final adoption) whereby existing measures are maintained over many years and new ones are replicated on other fields. In all three phases, and particularly in the first one, there are numerous factors that influence the decision of a farmer to invest or not in a certain practice: sociocultural characteristics of the farm household, like education levels, or age, economic aspects, such as income, or farm size and obviously also the physical aspects of the land play a role. All these factors are different in each situation and for each farmer! That’s what makes understanding farmers’ behaviour towards sustainable land management so difficult!

Nevertheless, one common and important factor for continued adoption is the profitability of a measure. If a measure shows promise of financial benefits (for instance increased production or reduced labour needs) a farmer will be more motivated to actually adopt, maintain and replicate this measure. The implementation of conservation measures should thus not be an activity on its own. It should always be accompanied by other integrated measures such as improved seeds, fertilizer use, and better crop management, which together improve the future prospects of increasing income for the farm household. And that’s an important lesson for people and projects that aim to achieve sustainable land management!

In the past, but still these days as well, interventions and projects in land management were often carried out in a top-down manner - telling farmers which practice was best for their land, often using incentives like food or cash to achieve changes in land management. Results of these top-down projects are very limited, because farmers don’t really participate in the different phases of these top-down interventions. Take a look at this ladder: participation is found at every stage, but at the bottom it is token or passive participation.

In our example, this means that farmers carry out conservation practices, but they don’t know exactly why, and they are not convinced that these practices will actually bring them benefits. So once the practices are there, farmers won’t maintain them, or replicate new ones on other fields, unless – of course - they get more incentives to do so! But the higher you go on the ladder, the more stakeholders (farmers) are empowered and feel ownership: they are involved in the whole process, they use their own knowledge and wisdom to find measures that work best, and they have intrinsic motivation to undertake action. Then sustainability comes into sight and when a farmer is intrinsically motivated to practice sustainable soil management, the hurdle of limited short-term profitability gets much smaller or goes away. A motivated farmer knows that benefits will come, despite possible high investment costs when starting with good practices! So to conclude: understanding farmers' behaviour and why they manage their land as they do, is crucial for achieving sustainable soil management.

The Need for Landscape Level Approaches:

Sustainable soil management can only be reached if economic, environmental and socio-cultural aspects are duly taken into account. For the farmer, a sustainable management practice, first of all, needs to be effective in addressing the soil threat menacing his field. But at the same time, such a practice needs to deliver benefits such as increased yields or reduced management costs, and need to fit within the socio-cultural context. Cattle herders may for example have an interest in setting aside degraded land as fodder reserves, but may not take an interest in implementing bunds to stop erosion from overgrazed areas, their focus is on their herds, which are mobile, and not on the soil.

Would sustainable soil management then always depend on the local land manager? There are three key reasons why this may not be enough: First, soil threats are often driven by factors much beyond the control of the local land manager, such as the climate, other land users or for instance roads causing soil erosion on farmers’  fields. Second, unsustainable practices often affect others than the land manager too: so-called off-site or downstream effects. For example, sediments carried away from eroded fields may cause sedimentation of a downstream reservoir. Third, effectiveness of soil-improving measures often requires a collaborative effort from many different stakeholders, for instance researchers and farm equipment industries can work together with farmers to develop machines that cause less soil compaction. In order to understand these interactions, and to develop sustainable land management we thus need to look at larger scales. Let us call this the landscape level.

Landscapes refer to the places where humans interact with the natural environment and with each other. Scales of landscapes can vary, such as shown here where interactions still manifest.

For society, this means considering levels of organization above the individual land user, this includes local authorities, affected communities, businesses, etc. For soil threats, this means also considering the off-site impacts.

The Role of Policies in Sustainable Soil Management:

Let me explain some basic things about policies; and then we’ll go to Tanzania, where you will see the effect of policies on our soils. Policies are designed to achieve specific objectives, and always involve two principal issues: the process: of policy making, implementation and review and the content: what the policy is about and wants to achieve, and how. Concerning the process, the first phase is making the policy. Crucial issues here are: who is involved in the formulation of the policy? Who decides about the final goals?

Next comes implementation: from paper to practice. How is the policy implemented? Who is responsible? Are there sufficient resources? And do we review the policy? Do we learn from our experiences? Can the policy be adjusted if needed? Then the content. Good formulation of the right objectives is essential. Thus, all stakeholders – especially the ones the policy is targeted to – must be involved and feel ownership of the policy! Furthermore, a policy contains clear statements, with details about specific regulations, requirements, or modifications that the policy is creating. And finally, the instruments. How will the policy be implemented: by force, with subsidies, new laws?

This choice can be key to the success of the policy! Given the importance of the instruments, let’s look at them more closely. First there are the financial instruments. A policy can raise taxes, but it can also give subsidies, for instance on fertilizers or improved seeds. Policies can also make use of public investments: for example, to construct a new road to improve market access for farmers. Another instrument is new laws or regulations, to stimulate use of better farming techniques, or prohibit farming on steep slopes. A final policy instrument is capacity development: investment in capacity building, training and organizing stakeholders, enabling them to achieve sustainable soil management.

I hope you are starting to see that policies actually do matter for how we manage our soils. Now let’s go to Tanzania, to the Kilombero wetland, here on the map in the red oval. This is the Kilombero wetland: flat fertile soils, surrounded by high green mountains.

The Kilombero river is the vein of this wetland: every year it floods the area with water and sediment. Its good conditions for rice cultivation make the wetland “the bread basket of Tanzania”. This attracts many immigrants: often pastoralists, who come with their cattle and clear a piece of land. The increased pressure on the land is devastating for the ecosystem within the wetland but also in the bordering mountains, where pristine forest reserves are cut down for agriculture.

This area belongs to Sululu village, but its inhabitants could not avoid encroachment by outsiders.

Only three years ago this was forest, which the villagers used for hunting and collection of firewood, and which regulated the water in the area.

Recently immigrants have settled here; they slash and burn the vegetation, to start farming on these marginal lands. First on the flatter areas, then on areas with ever steeper slopes, that are not suitable for farming. This has led to soil erosion and depletion of soil nutrients, in just a few years. Rills and gullies form easily on these erosion prone soils, where new farmers without any experience in farming don’t know how to manage their land well. There are also conflicts between the inhabitants and the immigrants with their cattle: they all compete for the same forest, land and water resources.

Immigrants claim that this land is idle, not used. Policies have failed to solve these land problems, most land in Tanzania is not privately owned, but the policies and regulations regarding land use planning and sustainable resource management on these common lands have not been successful or could not be enforced.

A recent analysis of policies in Tanzania shows that there is no specific policy for sustainable land management, but numerous other policies do include soil related objectives. However, most of these policies have not been successful. Problems start during the policy making phase, where particularly the low participation of district level stakeholders is a serious limitation. Moreover, due to the absence of proper regulations, policies can often not be enforced. Underlying causes of these limitations are found at higher ministerial levels: lack of collaboration between ministries, frequent changes of personnel, different priorities leading to unclear strategies, and too much politics.

In order to achieve sustainable soil management, capacity building is a first priority: at all levels, also at national level, with capable and committed professionals being in charge of policy formulation and implementation. Tanzania is just an example, but not an exception: public policies, private-sector policies, global policies - all have tremendous influence on the fate of our soils. So yes, policies can make or break our success in achieving sustainable soil management.