From the Director General

esertification is an environmental nightmare that has
been worrying agricultural researchers and environmentalists for a long time. It is the most extreme form of soil erosion, and also causes loss of biodiversity. To think of erosion only in terms of encroaching desert is to lose sight of the damage that will have been done to the land long before its dangerous effects become visible. ICARDA believes that we must deal with the problem of soil erosion long before it gets to that stage.
        Erosion by  wind and water has already, quietly, done much damage to the land all over the region. It shows in improperly-used sloping land that is no longer as productive, because the topsoil is being eroded by runoff. It shows in silt which clogs dams and watercourses, ruining investment in construction that has been made just a few years before. It shows in exhaustion of nutrients from cereal monocropping. And it shows in the dust that settles over everything in the summer. It may not show itself to the casual observer, who passes by a field and sees something still growing there. But our scientists can see it clearly enough.
        So can the farmers. But here we hit a practical difficulty with soil conservation. Some farmers can afford to take a long-term view, and sacrifice short-term income to long-term environmental protection. On the whole, however, farming communities--which are often economically marginalized--face economic and demographic pressures that force them to maximise output from the land by adopting techniques that eventually lead to loss of soil and biodiversity.
        One might draw the conclusion, from this, that practical conservation measures are impossible until the land ceases altogether to be productive, and the farmer cannot use it anyway. ICARDA does not take this view. What we must do is devise solutions that bring net benefits to farmers and pastoralists, so that they can implement them now.

This was the rationale behind our cereal/feed legume rotation work; the weight-gain for sheep grazing the legumes fills the economic gap left by a year of no cereal production. The following year, cereal yields are up. So it is a solution that farmers can afford to adopt. ICARDA has demonstrated this in its El Bab

project in Syria, and is continuing this work elsewhere. But the key point here is: farmers did not want to adopt this solution before these benefits had been demonstrated to them. They couldn't afford to take chances.
        We accept this. Now we are working with farmers to devise solutions to the problem of runoff erosion in olive groves. We are doing it by tackling some of their immediate concerns and are getting, in return, cooperation on longer-term experiments.
        ICARDA believes that this type of participatory research is highly cost-effective.  Money spent on solutions which are not adopted is wasted. ICARDA and its partners will continue with participatory research. But we need to focus on solutions at some stage. We can talk to farmers, but unless the work does result in a feasible, transferrable technology that is adopted, we have wasted our time and theirs. It has to lead to improved income generation and therefore poverty alleviation, and a protected and enhanced natural-resource base--that is, soil, water and biodiversity. Participatory work can not be rushed, but it will lead us in the right direction.

Prof. Dr Adel El-Beltagy
Director General