In the heterodox policy approach to land degradation currently in vogue the "solutions to land degradation are thought to lie in out-migration, training poor people in better techniques of farming, diversification and off farm employment, providing local user groups with rights to manage degraded communal lands... Policies to make land tenure more secure in areas in which traditional tenure systems have broken down... adoption of low cost, low input technologies that would increase and stabilize yields, diversify production and maintain the resource base... (e.g.) contour cultivation... vetiver grass... improved technology to terraced lands68 and more appropriate land tenure policies... government subsidies to develop and improve low return farming activities maybe the only way to reduce poverty in these regions" [World Bank (1990)]. This approach focuses more on what the TAC report terms "marginal areas" and seems to ignore the fact that land degradation can easily affect the green revolution and other high productivity areas also69.
68
In dry land areas gains will commonly arise more from improvements in physical structure leading to enhanced soil moisture levels and retention [Shaxson (1992)] than from the reduction of soil nutrient losses, although the latter are important [Stocking (1986)].
69 I am thankful to Ted Henzell, formerly of TAC for highlighting this distinction.
Despite the fact that some argue that regions with marginal climates and soils are not rewarding to biophysical scientists and that there is not much scope for research on contours and terraces there seems to be considerable scope for agricultural research especially in the social science aspects. The impact of agricultural research is larger where both the severity of poverty and the number of poor are accounted for [ICARDA (1997)]. The development community, as exemplified by the World Bank [Walton (1997)] and TAC [Nelson et al. (1997)], is seeking to move from counting the poor to understanding processes and relationships and to documenting strategies that work.
The work of the International Agricultural Research Centers can contribute significantly in several ways to poverty alleviation and simultaneous natural resource management. These strategies include efforts to develop technologies that simultaneously improve productivity and natural resource management that use low-cost inputs that the poor can afford and apply; continuing to focus on developing resource-management practices that conserve soil, water and vegetation and do not decrease productivity. It includes strategies that focus on developing and disseminating more diversified farming systems that reduce economic risk, contribute to greater resource use efficiency and provide higher returns to the farm community and continuing to focus on improved vertical integration from producers to consumers, including enhanced quality and added value of farm products, improved post harvest processing and storage, and employment generation [e.g., ICARDA (1997)].
These strategies call for the integration of research on commodity improvement with the conservation and management of natural resources. This has long been recognized as one of the major organizational challenges facing the future of international agricultural research.70
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see the March 1993 Report of the Center Director's Working Group on Ecoregional Approach (Annex 1, p.3)
Several lessons reported in the Crosson and Anderson (1993) study are relevant to the agenda setting for policy research within this framework of integrating research on commodity improvement with conservation and management of natural resources (NRM). Specifically:
· If input policies and institutions are weak and the success of commodity research depends on purchased inputs then NRM research might be a better investment than commodity research;· If commodity research and NRM research are complementary then poor policies and weak institutions lower the return to both kinds of research;
· Research to find ways to reduce off-farm losses caused by on-farm practices will only be used if farmers benefit from the solutions developed;
· Attacking some problems such as downstream effects of soil erosion at the farm level may not be the most efficient solution. It may be more efficient to increase productivity on the farm and find other technical and institutional means to reduce the damages of sediment downstream.
TAC (1997) indicates four cases of NRM where the System should concentrate its resources because user incentives are weakest there. These are cases where:
· Benefits accrue over a long time,
· Benefits accrue remotely,
· Benefits are relatively difficult to identify, and
· Benefits accrue to different persons than those who bear the cost of management.
TAC (1997) also highlights the criteria for assessing the relative importance of the substance of proposals for NRM research in the CGIAR system. Its first criterion is that the research should contribute to poverty alleviation and environmental protection and/or enhancement. Answers to several questions identified by Scherr (1998) can help to clarify process of priority setting in the area of poverty and land degradation. Specifically answers to questions such as:
Who are the principal resource users? What are their actual (as opposed to theoretical) incentives for investment and dis-investment in important natural resources? What are the farmer's and the community's perceptions of resource degradation? What is their understanding of the ecological processes involved when production systems change or their strategies of adapting to degradation change? What is the empirical evidence of resource degradation at the farm, community and regional levels, and the realistic estimates of the costs and benefits of resource rehabilitation for the different actors?
can greatly facilitate effective policy making.
Effective policy agendas, as Crosson and Anderson (1993) stress, need to be built on realism and should avoid the tendency to "reinvent another wheel for which there is no demand."
Precise measurement and rigorous analysis are necessary to understand fully the processes of poverty and land degradation. For effective extrapolation and prediction it is important to build up from several rigorous case studies of household decision making based on multi-year panel data sets that include specific land quality and use modules.
