ABSTRACT
A strategic choice of a soil conservation policy means a choice which is both feasible within an existing political economic context and is in step with a future direction of social change which is ideologically acceptable to policy-makers themselves. Although an economic explanation to soil conservation policies is the determining one, not all people, nor their ideas, reflect economic imperatives. The ideas can be conceived of as a civilising mission on the part of Europeans, of less-developed people who need helping from themselves, a kind of missionary zeal experienced in colonial Africa between. A strategic choice of conservation policy must be aware of these elements in rural development, and the problems which they create. One of the most inappropriate responses to the possibilities of successful conservation is a catatonic pessimism. All it can realistically do is to call for a new intellectual approach and individual action something which, by its own method, is deemed not to be enough.
