30 The Global Food System
Recent project efforts
Graded and contour bunds developed for large-scale farming in the US are widely
applied in soil and water conservation programmes in India. Even under heavy
subsidies, most small farmers reject them, for very good reasons (Kerr and Sanghi,
1992). These bunds leave corners in some fields and so there is a risk of losing the
piece of land to a neighbour. The central water course for drainage benefits only
some farmers, damaging the land of others. Contour farming is inconvenient when
farmers use multi-row implements, and so is only suitable where the holding is
large and tractors are available. Contour bunding without facilities for dealing
with surplus water commonly breach, again concentrating water flow that quickly
forms gullies. It is, therefore, not uncommon for entire bunds to be levelled as
soon as project staff shift to the next village (Sanghi, 1987).
Sometimes, successes are reversed almost immediately. In an evaluation of
World Food Programme supported conservation in Ethiopia, the extent of the ter-
racing was said to be ‘impressive’, yet monitoring in one sub-catchment found 40
per cent of the terracing broken the year after construction (SIDA, 1984). The
project had expected that local people would bear all the costs of maintenance.
Another example comes from the Yatenga region of Burkina Faso, where 120,000ha
of earth bunds constructed at high cost with machine graders in the early 1960s
have now all but disappeared (Marchal, 1978, 1986). In the Majjia and Badéguicheri
valleys of Niger, most of the 6000ha of earth bunds constructed between 1964–
1980 are in an advanced state of degradation (Reij, 1988). In Sukumuland, Tanza-
nia, where contour banks, terraces and hedges were forced upon farmers, almost
no evidence remained of these conservation works by the early 1980s and now
‘erosion is extremely severe’ (Stocking, 1985).
In Oaxaca, Mexico, a large-scale government soil conservation programme is
also establishing contour bunds based on the US models. It is an area noted in the
1970s and 1980s by various ‘expert’ missions as having ‘massive soil erosion’ and
‘the world’s worst soil erosion’. But recent evidence is suggesting that erosion has
only become serious following the imposing of terraces and bunds (Blackler,
1994). Rill erosion has been recorded within one year of their establishment and
degradation has been so severe that less than 5 per cent of the bunded area is
cropped.
In Cape Verde off the west coast of Africa, the state takes responsibility for
erosion control by paying farmers to work on their own land. The result is that
traditional practices are ignored as farmers take the money without influencing the
project. Socalco terraces, for example, are built from top to bottom of steep slopes,
with the result that foundations are often left hanging in the air (Haagsma, 1990).
As Ben Haagsma has put it ‘this does not stimulate ... good cooperation between
farmers and MDRP [the project]. It is difficult to eradicate the attitude “MDRP
knows best”.’ In India, farmers have only permitted bunds to be constructed on
their fields because they are attracted to subsidies. The impact on the relations
between government and farmers is serious: ‘in most villages farmers have become