Excerpt
INCREASED food and fiber production is an urgent problem facing many developing countries. Often, this need leads to the use of farming systems that exploit soil resources and reduce productivity. At the same time, population pressures and the loss of prime agricultural land to urban growth force the cultivation of new, often marginal land or the reduction in the cycle time of shifting cultivation (7). Many such changes are unplanned. The result is agricultural systems that cannot sustain yields.
Soil conservation programs strive to ensure sustainable, productive land use. The quandary facing policymakers is that translating this objective into successful programs requires a thorough assessment of soil erosion and its economic impacts.
Major constraints to promoting sustained land use include the lack of specific data and knowledge about soil property and crop productivity relationships. Social, cultural, and institutional constraints also exist in many countries (8).
Nearly two years ago, 41 soil conservationists met at the East-West Center in Hawaii to discuss the technical basis for conservation policy making in developing countries (18). Those discussions resulted in an assessment procedure that identifies, quantifies, and evaluates the impacts of soil erosion and sedimentation. This procedure can help policymakers in developing nations …
Footnotes
S. J. Perrens is senior lecturer in the Department of Resource Engineering, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia; N. A. Trustrum is a scientist with the Soil Conservation Centre, Aokautere, Ministry of Works and Development, Private Bag, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
- Copyright 1985 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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