ABSTRACT
It may appear paradoxical that, in the Sahel of all places, we should now embark on an analysis of how smallholders can be holding degradation at bay and improve the productivity of their dry, sandy and easily eroded soils. But the paradox is rooted in mistaken conceptions that the Sahel has overshot the limits imposed on its productivity by natural constraints and that smallholders are destructive consumers of biological resources—necessarily so, owing either to an ignorance of better methods or to an inability to change those methods. This is the established narrative (Swift, 1996) or ‘myth’ (Thomas and Middleton, 1994) of desertification, and its power to mislead the unwary (particularly unwary but powerful policy makers) is now recognised (Warren, 1996). If there is to be a future for the rural Sahel, these conceptions must be challenged, and with them, the apparent paradox of agropastoralists actually improving the productivity of their resources.
