December
8, 2005: On the barren slopes of the village of Kissane,
about 6 miles southwest of Thiès in central western
Senegal, long lines of reddish-orange rocks snake along the
contours of the landscape. A group of about 40 farmers, men
and women alike, take a break from their work of digging shallow
trenches and lining them with rocks. They stop to listen to
Seybou Diémé, the extension agent who got them
started on this project.
“This work you’re doing is so important. In Tatène,
another village where we did this work in collaboration with
The
Rodale Institute®, the land used to look like this,”
he says. “Now there are fields of millet everywhere
there.” Seybou, a 36-year agricultural extension veteran,
works with ADT-GERT, a non-governmental organization based
in Thiès, to rehabilitate the highly eroded soils of
the region.
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“The women are particularly
motivated. In fact, everywhere we go, it’s
the women who are the most mobilized.”
--Babacar
Diouf
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Since the project began in October 2003, Seybou has helped
the local population lay miles of rock line, criss-crossing
the hundreds of hectares that make up the watershed Kissane
shares with seven other villages. The work is labor intensive,
but with four groups of 40 working three days a week at different
work sites, the work is advancing at a steady clip. Two thirds
of them are women. “The women are particularly motivated,”
says Seybou”s assistant Babacar Diouf. “In fact,
everywhere we go, it’s the women who are the most mobilized.”
Rock lines are a common soil and water conservation technique
throughout semi-arid West Africa. In this part of Senegal,
annual precipitation is highly variable, ranging from 12 to
24 inches. However, it only rains between July and October,
and often only as a few intense rainfalls. As a result, the
soil becomes quickly saturated and the majority of water runs
off along the surface, carrying with it precious organic matter
and topsoil, carving out rills and gullies along the way.
Rock lines slow the flow
By laying rock lines along the contours – any line
that stays level across the face of a slope -- farmers can
slow the flow of runoff and allow the water to infiltrate
into the soil. The lines also capture sediment, and after
several years the land between lines levels out into a slight
terrace ready for farming.
By allowing the rain to filter into the soil, Seybou maintains
that the water table can be recharged, thereby promoting the
activity of soil microbial and microfaunal populations. He
has noticed that in the past several years, termite mounds
in the area have stopped growing or been abandoned in response
to the receding water table. Bringing water back into the
soil, he believes, is the logical first step in reviving the
soil ecology, and the first step to regenerating its fertility.
“When people in Senegal think about water, they only
think about dams and pumps. They don’t understand that
[water management] goes beyond that.“
“When people in
Senegal think about water, they only think about dams
and pumps. They don’t understand that [water management]
goes beyond that.“
He plans next to set aside 25 acres as pasture land for community
grazing. This area will be an “improved fallow,”
an area in which they plant woody and herbaceous species palatable
to livestock. In an adjacent watershed, a few kilometers up
the road, Seybou has worked with the village of Dakhar Mbaaye
since 1996 to slow water erosion in the Foret Classé
de Thiès, a 30,000-acre national forest across the
road where the majority of the village population grazes its
livestock. While grazing on this land is actually illegal,
there is no enforcement.
Traditional grazing land has been lost to urban expansion
and expansion of peanut fields, the nation’s major cash
crop. “There shouldn’t be any agricultural activity
in the Foret Classé that includes livestock. But until
they understand this, there has to be a way to slow the degradation
and give the animals something to eat,” Seybou says.
Basins bring back vegetation
To do this, he and the Dakhar Mbaaye villagers have dug
several crescent-shaped catchment basins to slow the flow
of water, allowing infiltration. The 6-foot-wide crescents
are only 12 to 14 inches deep to keep livestock from falling
and injuring themselves. A livestock corridor between crescents
facilitates the passage of large herds through the area, part
of a “foret routière” (forest path) to
be managed by the local population. Natural vegetation is
slowly reemerging in the area, and the nep-nep (Acacia nilotica)
trees planted by the project workers around several of the
basins are thriving. “There is no government agency
taking care of forest restoration at present; and that will
be a huge problem in the future for this country. Everything
is linked in Senegal. If [the forest management] knot is undone,
everything will be come apart. So we have to react.”
The next stage of the project back in Kissane involves convincing
individual farmers to implement soil and water conservation
techniques in their fields, to improve crop production. “We
need to feed the village and feed the soil.”
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“We need to feed the village
and feed the soil.”
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In addition to having them build rock lines, Seybou will
encourage them to plant live fences with trees (such as Prosopis
sp.and Acacia nilotica) and fodder banks (of
such plants as Andropogon Gayanus, Panicum sp.,
and Leucaena leucocephala). He says that for soil
and water regeneration to take place throughout the watershed,
individuals will need to take some initiative themselves.
He hopes that once they see how the soil has improved and
the vegetation returned to the slopes above the village, they
will be convinced.
Many already seem to recognize the importance of what they
are doing. One man says to Seybou, “This work is done
for our children.”
“They know what they’re doing,” the agricultural
trainer says, satisfied that the goals and techniques he shared
make sense to those who have to do the work. “I measured
out the first line, and they’ve done the rest. They
call me if they have any problems, but they don’t need
me.”
This is a good thing. Seybou is eager to carry his work on
to other watersheds like this one. “We need to do this
for the entire country.” 
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