The Future of Smallholder Farming in Eastern Africa - Uganda ...

4.3 Perception of a soil erosion problem
Individuals must perceive negative effects before they can take action to mitigate them. Soil
erosion, or soil degradation in general, is a process that takes a long time for the
consequences to be realized and, only then, if those affected are able to directly associate the
results to that process.
There is an ever growing concern that intertemporal degradation of soil resources is
already seriously limiting production in the developing world and that the problem is getting
worse (Lal 1990; UNEP 1982; UNCED 1992). It is because of its intertemporal nature that
the question arises of whether the immediate users (farmers) are able to recognize the
degradation problem early. Yet, because farmers depend on land for their livelihoods, it
would be unusual for them to be unaware of serious soil degradation problems, unless they
were recent immigrants to a new agro-ecological zone, where the process of degradation has
not yet affected yields or its cause is invisible (Scherr 1999).
Soil erosion is one element of soil degradation and is a process that is clearly visible.
We should expect, therefore, that farmers’ response to soil erosion would be contingent upon
their perception of the seriousness of the problem, especially if they perceive a net benefit
from introducing ameliorating measures. In Table 4.11, the perception of a soil erosion
problem in the two study sites is presented.
Table 4.11 Perception of a soil erosion problem
Response Machakos Taita-Taveta Combined
Frequency % Frequency % Frequency %
Very high 20 13.2 39 27.1 59 19.9
High 29 19.1 19 13.2 48 16.2
Moderate 40 26.3 48 33.3 88 29.7
Low 47 30.9 27 18.8 74 25.0
None 16 10.5 11 7.6 27 9.1
Total 152 100.0 144 100.0 296 100.0
Source: Field survey, 2003
About 32 percent of the respondents in Machakos rated the seriousness of soil erosion
as either high or very high, whereas 26 percent were of the opinion that the problem was
moderate, 31 percent thought the problem was small. In contrast, about 40 percent of the
respondents in Taita-Taveta felt that the seriousness of soil erosion was either high or very
high, 33 percent felt it was moderate, while 26 percent believed erosion was low or that there
was no problem at all.
The relatively higher rating of the soil erosion problem in Taita-Taveta may have
been the result of a less intensive exposure to soil conservation campaigns than in Machakos.
It is possible, therefore, that these campaigns would have enabled Machakos farmers to
undertake soil conservation measures more intensively, so that they no longer regarded soil
erosion as a serious problem. Nevertheless, 36 percent of the respondents in both districts
believed that soil erosion was still a problem, since they rated it either high or very high,
whereas 30 percent believed the problem to be of a moderate nature.