Contributed Articles
Preventing Desertification Ensures Secured Agriculture
By Amanuel Tesfay
Jul 4, 2008, 5:50am

When streams are silted and rendered not viable for water supply, when animals are dying and migrating, and when food productivity is decreasing, they are indicators of drought conditions, which in turn, are symptoms of desertification.

Desertification is the process of progressive drying-out of a region, resulting from various factors, mainly climate changes and human activities. It affects all sectors, but mostly the agricultural one. And as long as the socio-economic development of one nation is dependent mainly on agriculture, desertification impacts the socio-economic sector directly. What does this tell us? The poor are hurt most, because they depend mainly on the land for a living.

Chronic food shortages caused by war and droughts are the most visible aspects of Africa's food and agricultural crisis. But the greatest long-term source of food insecurity has been and remains poor agricultural performance. As a result, food self-sufficiency has fallen, and dependence on commercial food imports and food aid has increased. According to environmental experts, the world will lose close to one third of its arable land by the coming few years due to desertification. Such a loss during a period of rapid population growth and increased demand for food could be disastrous. If the problem of desertification could not be addressed soon, sub-Saharan Africa's food crisis will more than double by 2010. What is to be done? Although the problem of desertification can be tackled, how it can be tackled should also be answered. As it always resulted from human activities, increasing awareness of people about the impact of desertification should be given priority.

Eritrea, as part of the most catastrophic Sub-Sahhran African region, would not escape from severe desertification. Moreover, as the large part of the people of Eritrea depends on agricultural products, it would certainly be affected negatively. Besides, being a country that does not have advanced agricultural technology for food production would probably make the current food crisis worse. Lack of water, or its inefficient use is fundamental cause of many desertification problems. This requires the people of Eritrea to build dams to prevent such problems and to enhance irrigation. Introducing irrigation system enables to cultivate more land, hence, increase food production.However, this alone may not be enough to solve desertification problems. So, to prevent desertification and increase production, a proper use of water is important. In addition, if we are to prevent soil degradation so as to increase food production, we must understand how and why the rates of climate change and human activity affect the environment. This is because combating desertification would be successful if it is based on earth-science information.

History indicates that 30 percent of the land of Eritrea was covered with forest 100 years ago. It was during the successive colonialism that the natural vegetations were cut down. During the colonial periods, little measure was taken to plant new areas or enrich the existing forest areas nor to protect and manage sustainably. Destruction of natural vegetation has encouraged washing away of the top fertile layer of soil by water and wind. This means, the lesser natural vegetation on the land, the higher would be the soil erosion. This in turn, has led to low productivity.

Alarmed by such a precarious state of the environment, the government introduced a number of measures soon after the liberation of the country. As part of the national reconstruction program, it has been striving to prevent desertification by different methods, mainly by planting trees and soil and water conservation. The ban on cutting trees, hunting or the capture of wildlife was introduced, and is still in force. Parallel to these control measures, the government mobilized the rural population and high school students to plant the hillside catchment areas. Here, the summer work program by high school students can be mentioned as a good example. Satisfactory reforestation and soil conservation activities have been coducted since the project was started in 1994. Until recently however, the government’s effort in forestry had focused only on afforestation of the denuded hillside catchment and on capacity building. Little attention was given to natural forests /woodlands and wildlife conservation and development.This is now changing as the Ministry of Agriculture is dealing with the conservation of important forest areas and ecosystems that have particular characteristics in terms of their forest and wildlife biodiversity. The Ministry also intends to continue encouraging tree planting in the context of agro forestry.

As the problems of desertification are directly related to farming, environmental conservation should be seen as an integral part of the farming system. Insufficient methods of farming for example causes desertification. Hence, avoiding of farming which encourages desertification should be encouraged. One thing we should bear in mind is that, we cannot stop desertification totally. But, we can fight it and increase our production. Introducing of drought resistant crops along with modern fertilizers is one method. Most of all, educating farmers on how to mange the land and increase agricultural production is important. These steps are all parts of modern agriculture. Therefore, desertification can be easily prevented if farmers have broad knowledge on how and why it could be arisen.

In short, the deterioration of productive ecosystems is an obvious and serious threat to human progress. So, action to combat desertification is required urgently before the costs of rehabilitation rise beyond practical possibility or before the opportunity to act is lost forever.

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