SOIL EROSION — HALL 313 



"The African people have never established a symbiotic relationship 

 with land. They are, in the strict scientific sense, parasites on the 

 land, all of them;" and in another place he speaks of flying over central 

 Africa and picking out the eroded areas by their color. 



These instances will suffice ; over a large part of Africa— the eastern 

 side from the Abyssinian frontier down to the Cape, Uganda, and 

 parts of Nigeria, everywhere indeed except in the tropical rain forest 

 of the western seaboard and interior— conditions are such as render 

 erosion by washing a danger. Under cultivation the humus of the 

 soil rapidly becomes exhausted, the climate produces recurrent 

 periods of drought broken by rainfalls of fierce intensity. You have 

 further a native population practicing a destructive form of agricul- 

 ture and keeping a vast uneconomic head of stock, including the 

 devastating goat in large numbers; they are eating rapidly into such 

 forest areas as are left open (pi. 2). Small wonder that famine is 

 never far away from some of the tribes, that the major political issue 

 between native and white man is the cry for more land. Yet even 

 if there were more land to give, the day of reckoning would only be 

 deferred, the new land would only be eaten up in its turn; the native 

 must either change his methods or limit his numbers. Indeed the 

 situation has even now gone so far that from time to time the Gov- 

 ernment has to import food to save a tribe from starvation, and the 

 problems of native unrest and land hunger begin to press on the white 

 community. African soil was never rich nor presented that reserve 

 of easily exploited fertility that has been the wealth of both North 

 and South America; it is also, as no other country, a reservoir of diseases 

 of man, animals, and plants. Soil erosion has been developing for 

 years without attracting very much notice, and has now reached the 

 stage when the growth of the desert may speed up catastrophically. 



It is but recently that the dangers of erosion in Africa have come 

 to be realized. When I was in Africa in 1929 I saw how contour 

 cultivation and recuperative grassland was being introduced into the 

 farming of the Cape Province, and the Drought Investigation Com- 

 mission of 1923 had references to erosion. The problem of over- 

 stocking was preeminently before me on the Kenya Agricultural 

 Commission, but the widespread extent of erosion was only made 

 evident in later reports, such as that of the Native Economic Com- 

 mission of South Africa in 1932, the Basutoland Enquiry, and the 

 Kenya Land Commission of 1933. The Basutoland report shows 

 that the administration had begun to take measures for the regenera- 

 tion of wasted areas, but now it is evident that all the African colonies 

 have become erosion conscious, as may be seen from Sir Frank Stock- 

 dale's report on his recent tour through Africa. Thanks to him, I 

 shall be able to show you a number of photographs of the methods 

 that are being adopted. 



