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When talking about poverty in Africa people often talk about "black gold" - oil - generating both economic development and conflict.

Because of climate change, there is an increasing focus on water, or "blue gold", and its potential to create development and crisis.

But not so many people talk about "brown gold", or soil - the wealth that lies beneath our feet which is critical to sustain and develop life.

Soil, of course, is essential to grow all our food. But it also brings great value in supporting biodiversity, assisting with flood control, and playing a critical role in the cycling of nutrients such as carbon and nitrogen. In fact, soils store three times as much carbon as vegetation and trees.

The value of soil can be increased or decreased by the land-management choices people make, such as the amount of tillage, the use of cover crops, crop rotation, or the use of nitrogen-fixing crops.

It has been said that for every US dollar invested in agriculture and rural development, four dollars are created.(1)

The challenge is creating and preserving that wealth, especially in Africa, where the soils are particularly fragile, and people are largely dependent on the land for their livelihoods.

As Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) said on 6th June 2009, “Poor soils result in poor people”.(2)

However, it is becoming harder and harder to create wealth from the soil because around the world, population pressure and changes in climate are leading to desertification, land degradation and drought. People are increasingly forced to migrate to meet their basic needs, creating conflict and hardship.

Klaus Toepfer, the former Director of the UN Environment Programme, elaborates on the problem: “[Increased drought] causes people to adopt more desperate strategies to survive. Deforestation, causing land degradation and desertification, leads to a spiral: less moisture in soils and in greenery means less rainfall, which means less vegetation and so on.”(3)

Managing soil in semi-arid areas is pivotal to poverty reduction, according to the UNCCD: “In many dryland countries, combating desertification and promoting development are virtually one and the same due to the social and economic importance of natural resources and agriculture.” (4)

Excellent Development’s work to support soil and water conservation in semi-arid Africa enables people to reverse the vicious circle of environmental degradation. Combining the strategies of terracing land, planting trees and building sand dams creates social, economic and environmental benefits that enable farmers and their families to make a sustainable living.

Excellent Development Kenya co-founder Joshua Mukusya often refers to himself as a ‘son of the soil’. He encourages farmers like Dorcas Nzioki to realise the wealth potential of the soil on their farm, referring to the Kamba saying “Take care of your soil and it will take care of you”.

"I appreciate working in partnership with Excellent Development Kenya,” says Dorcas, who is a member of the Miamba Mitamboni Self Help Group in Kenya. “The organisation sustains and holds my joy for I wanted to desert my husband because my father in law gave us a farm which was degraded, very poor, unterraced and non-productive and so nothing would grow in it. The situation of the farm discouraged me and I hated farming.

"Today I boast of the same farm, I have dug terraces and manured it to revive life in it. The terraces conserve water and nutrients. Incorporated manure in the farm is not washed away by massive moving rain water.

"On further terracing of the farm the yield has increased higher and higher. In good rains I harvest enough for subsistence use and sell surplus. I sold the surplus and paid school fees for my children, bought storage chemicals, and the balance paid casual labourers to terrace my farm."

Excellent Development supports farmers to maximise the wealth of their soil in two ways: by reducing soil erosion and by increasing soil fertility.

Soil erosion is mainly addressed by terracing. Terracing is hard work, but properly constructed terraces conserve significant amounts of soil and water – unterraced land loses up to 250 tonnes of soil per hectare per year, and up to 70% of rain that falls is lost as run-off rather than being absorbed into the soil.

Zero grazing farm animals (keeping them tethered in a stall) also reduces soil erosion as the animals are prevented from freely wondering around the farm and causing damage to the terraces. The zero grazing system also requires fodder crops such as napier grass to be grown to feed the animals with. These crops are grown right on the edges of the terraces, helping to reduce soil erosion and supporting the terraces to hold their familiar ‘step’ shape.

Holding farm animals for the majority of the day in a stall produces another valuable by-product – manure. Manure collected in this way can be worked systematically into the soil to improve its fertility.

Soil fertility is also improved by the use of particular nitrogen-fixing, or leguminous, crops such as beans, which can be intercropped with maize and other grain crops. The leguminous crop dolichos lablab also acts as a highly effective cover crop – providing cover for the soil so moisture does not evaporate so easily in the hot sun.

Introducing all these measures requires a big investment of time. However this is made easier by two major factors: communities work together to terrace each others’ land and to build sand dams to provide a communal clean water source. With the sand dams built, farmers have much more time to work on their farms due to the many hours each day they save in walking to collect water.

Given that 40% of the world’s land is drylands and 80% of poor people rely on drylands resources (UNDP) the challenge and the potential is enormous. According to Jeffrey Sachs Director of Earth Institute and Special Advisor to the UN, “Drylands are in absolutely the frontline most vulnerable position with regard to global anthropogenic climate change”.

Excellent Development’s Vision is to promote soil and water conservation worldwide so that communities can improve their water supply, food production, health and incomes through sand dams, terracing and tree planting.

Towards this goal, Excellent Development Kenya recently hosted staff from SOS Sahel Sudan and plans to work with the NGO to support a sand dam replication project in Sudan. It is hoped that by increasing water security and community dialogue, this will reduce the level of conflict between farming and pastoralist communities over land and water rights, and increase the communities’ capacity to adapt to climate change.

As recently as June 17th, World Day to Combat Desertification highlighted that the quality of the soil in drylands regions of the world is not merely of immediate interest to millions of subsistence farmers eking out a living there but for the common future of our planet. We ignore at our peril the consequences of degraded environments in the poorer parts of the world because of the social, economic and environmental impacts that will affect us all.

To quote Franklin D. Roosevelt, “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself”.

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(1) Adolf Kloke-Lesch, Director-General German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Land Day, The Bonn Climate Change Talks, 6 June 2009, opening remarks

(2) Luc Gnacadja Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification on the occasion of the UNCCD Land Day 6 June 2009, statement

(3) NEF (2006) "Africa – Up in Smoke 2, The second report on Africa and Global Warming" Working Group on Climate Change and Development

(4) World Day to Combat Desertification, Conserving land and water - Securing our common future, 17 June 2009, Concept Note

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