EPID Agents Handbook for Soil and Water Conservation

Abstract

Five years ago (1970) W.D. Ware-Austin, Advisor to the Ethiopia Soil and Water Conservation Division, stated that Ethiopia loses one billion tons of soil every year from erosion. This is equivalent to sixty thousand (60,000) hectares one meter deep every year. So in the last five years, Ethiopia has lost three hundred thousand hectares of soil--more than enough soil to feed and clothe sixty thousand * families. But Ethiopia is not losing people at the same rate, in fact the population is increasing. Rough calculations show that for every hectare lost there are ten more people to feed each year. With these kind of figures no country can survive. Hunger and starvation have already come to Ethiopia, but an even greater threat looms in the future if something is not done soon. Soil erosion and population explosion are on a colision course. The result could mean mass starvation. In a recent report prepared under the direction of Dr. Leslie Brown, an authority on agricultural development, it was stated that a noticeable impact must be made on the problem of soil erosion in the next three years, and within ten years soil erosion control should be firmly and universally accepted and complete. This report was particularly concerned with the Wollo and Tigre regions, but areas in Eritrea, Hararghe and Shoa regions also have very serious erosion problems. However, soil erosion can be seen in every region of Ethiopia. It does not take an expert to see the destruction of land in Ethiopia resulting from soil erosion. It is particularly noticeable when driving from Addis /*baba to Dessie and then on to Mekele and Asmara. All the forests have been cleared from the mountain slopes; excess grazing has stripped the land bare of brush and grass; all the land is cultivated, even the very steep slopes; and many of the streams are choked with gravel and boulders which have been washed from the hills by excessive runoff. The loss of top soil has lowered crop yields. Some have said that soil erosion has been going on for a long time in Ethiopia so why get excited about it now? Yes, soil erosion has been going on for a long time; part of the Nile flood basin is made up of soils from Ethiopia,, Yet there is good reason to believe that the rate of soil erosion has increased in the last thirty or forty years. It is not hard to find farmers that can remember a spring that no longer flows, or a field that he plowed which is now a gully, or a meadow that no longer produced good grass for his cattle, or a forest that is no longer present to supply him with fuel. When the last spring is gone, the last field has been washed away, the last meadow has been destroyed, and the last tree has been cut down, what is man to do? Will another bag of fertilizer get him by, or a new seed?