Making Soil and Water Conservation Sustainable 377voices, and have their voice accepted as authentic and legitimate. If this is actively
sought, then the positive effects on soil and water resources can be remarkable.
Modernization of Soil and Water Conservation in the
US, Africa and South Asia
Beginnings in the US
The knowledge that soil erosion was both costly and damaging was first appreciated
on a wide scale by agricultural authorities in the US in the 19th century, and in colo-
nial Africa and India in the early part of the 20th century (Bennett, 1939; Hall, 1949;
Pretty and Shah, 1994). Rural development policies and practice have generally taken
the view that erosion occurs because farmers are poor managers of soil and water.
The style of intervention was first established in the US, where there is still a
marked contrast between the enduring success of indigenous soil and water con-
servation and the approaches adopted by soil conservation authorities. Native
American farming cultures farmed with soil and water conservation measures for
at least 1500 years in the Greater South West. Farmers of Anasazi, Hohokam,
Pueblo, Zuni, Hopi and Papago cultures located fields where water ran off hills,
built earthen diversion dams and channels to conduct water, used contour bunds,
stone terracing and contour hedges of agave, sited silt traps to produce gully fields,
grew crops in mounds and on ridges, and stored run-off in reservoirs (Rohn, 1963;
UNEP, 1983; Fish and Paul, 1992).
These combined to produce complex, diverse and productive agricultural sys-
tems. At Point of Pines, for example, 2500ha of cultivated land with contour ter-
races, check dams and bordered gardens supported at least 3000 people for 500
years, and in New Mexico, bordered gardens connected by ditches to vast rain
catchment areas supported a population density of 700km–2. Nonetheless, these
systems were ignored by the modern conservationists.
At first confined to the southern States, soil conservation spread across most
parts of the country in the early to mid-1800s. The principal technology was ter-
racing, but this was supplemented by a wide range of other resource-conserving
technologies, including contour ploughing, cross ploughing, green manures and
cover crops, drainage ditches, check dams and hillside stripping with hedgerows
(Hall, 1949). These technologies were developed, tested and adapted to local con-
ditions by farmers. Until the late 1800s, technologies were derived from ‘the expe-
riences of practical planters and farmers’.
However, by the 1870s–1880s, things had begun to change. Terraces of various
forms (broad base, bench, Nichols, Mangam, Chisholm and others) became increas-
ingly popular. Although there were objections, e.g. that terraces took too much land
out of cultivation and harboured weeds, increasing numbers of advisers, researchers
and extensionists began to make wider recommendations based on terraces alone.
Researchers at experimental stations, who at first had published bulletins and papers