SOIL CONSERVATION—SOME IMPLICATIONS
| Published date | 01 April 1953 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1953.tb00980.x |
| Author | T. D. Thomson |
| Date | 01 April 1953 |
66 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ADMINISTRATION
SOIL
CONSERVATION-SOME
IMPLICATIONS
By
T. D. Thomson, Senior District Commissioner, Nyasaland.
THESE
personal reflections are the result of three seasons' close association
with soil conservation work on African trust land in Nyasaland, as the Administrative
Officer in charge of a district where an intensive conservation campaign is being
carried on.
They
must
be viewed in the light of local conditions, and they may not
be valid in respect of some other parts of Nyasaland, much less in respect of other
tropical African territories. However, most of
them
seem to me to possess some
general validity.
The
district concerned is near a town, and has an average population density of
some 300 to the square mile. (There is a variation from 500 near the town to under
200 in the most distant part.)
The
people are matrilineal and uxorilocal, although
both
traditional arrangements are changing
under
modern conditions.
The
area
which is being treated intensively amounts to about 50 square miles, including one
particularly mountainous piece of country.
The
ancestors of the majority of the African inhabitants arrived about 80 years
ago.
Their
traditional agriculture is based on the shifting system, modified in
recent years by force of events and pressure of population to the more or less
permanent use of the same area of land, fallowing without system and occasionally
moving a",ay, if possible, when land is exhausted.
The
rights to the use of most
of the land are really owned by the women and only exceptionally can a man be
truly described as a landholder.
The
basic form of conservation employed is the construction of contour bunds,
to which planting ridges are then aligned. In the areas so far marked
out
for
bun ding there is a standing order that no unmarked land shall be cultivated.
Thus
the opening of new gardens automatically requires consideration of the suitability
of the land for cultivation and, if it is suitable, its bunding before cultivation begins.
It
also means
that
forbidden areas such as stream banks are easily recognized
because cultivation must not proceed beyond the end of
the
marked bund.
The
procedure has been that contours are pegged by teams using road tracers,
controlled by a more expert officer with a farmer's level and supervised by a
European. Occupiers of land are required to hoe traces between the pegs
put
in
by the bunding team within a week of pegging and then to raise the bunds to their
full height, normally 2 ft. with a 4 ft. base, within two months. Supplementary
measures are the planting of grass on the normally bare areas surrounding dwellings,
schools, mosques and churches, proper respect for all stream banks (which may,
however, in suitable cases be planted with crops such as sugar-cane and bananas),
box-ridging in the planting areas and the raising of paths and garden boundaries,
where necessary, to the same height as the planting ridges.
The
amount of work for the occupier involved in these operations depends, of
course, on the area over which he has rights. In one village, where a detailed
investigation was made, the average area worked
out
at about six acres. On normal
slopes bunds are constructed at a horizontal interval of approximately 30 yards.
This
means
that
asquare mile would theoretically contain some 60 linear miles of
buncl, so that the average holding might require the construction of about 1,000
yards of bund. A fit adult putting in a full day's work may be able to raise anything
up to 50 yards of
bund
daily,
but
a fair average is probably 30 yards, so that to
raise the necessary bunds on an average holding may require about amonth's work.
Reckoned in terms of money at present rates of pay, the total cost of bunding a
square mile is about £200.
£50
represents the cost of the labour employed in
marking the bunds and of supervision and follow-up by the agricultural and
To continue reading
Request your trial