Global Extent of Land Degradation and Its Human Dimension - Principles of Sustainable Soil Management in Agroecosystems - page 221

TABLE 9.6
Adoption Rate of ISFM in Selected SSA Countries

Nigeria Mali

Land Management Practice % Adoption

Fertilizer and animal manure 7.5 17.7

Animal manure 12.1 38.7

Fertilizer 45.3 16.3

Source: Nkonya, E. et al., Land under Pressure. In 2011 Global
Food Policy Report . IFPRI, Washington DC, 2012.

However, marketing and other constraints may limit adoption of practices with
higher returns. For example, despite its win-win-win advantage of greater yield,
profit, and environmental services, adoption of ISFM is lowest in the selected case
study countries (Table 9.6).
The drivers of land degradation discussed, contribute to farmers not adopting
sustainable land management practices, some of which could be more profitable than
the land degrading practices.

9.6 CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS
Since the poor and women heavily depend on natural resources (FAO 2009), invest-
ments to prevent land degradation and rehabilitate degraded lands will have the larg-
est impact on them (World Bank 2012). Unfortunately, land investment at the global
level and SSA in particular is limited. Our study shows that, for such investment
to be effective, it has to be accompanied with strengthening government effective-
ness, improving rural services, and designing policies, which will provide land users
incentives to invest in land improvement. For example, our study shows that the ISFM
practice—a combination of improved seeds, organic inputs, and judicious amount of
chemical fertilizer—gives the highest yield, is most profitable, and is likely to have
sustainable yield, but its adoption rate is lower than that of chemical fertilizer and
organic inputs. This means that achieving sustainable land management will require
multipronged strategies to address multiple land management constraints in devel-
oping countries. Such strategies will also help to address constraints leading to the
wide yield gaps in regions with severe land degradation.
While some strategies require financial resources, which poor countries may not
afford, other strategies only require changes in policies and institutions to provide
incentives for land users to use sustainable land management practices. For example,
the Niger's rural code, which gave tree tenure to land owners, provided incentives
that contributed to the regreening of the Sahel (Larwanou et al. 2009; Herrman et
al. 2005). Tree planting programs in Bangladesh, India, and other countries also
contributed to forest recovery even in areas with severe poverty.