Addis Ababa — The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union deserves to be imitated by African countries like Ethiopia, at least in one aspect. Farmers within the Community get cash assistance to look after their landscapes, under the reformed CAP.

Nobody will blame you if you are an African euroskeptic when it comes to CAP farm subsidies, its tariffs, etc. let alone try and emulate it. The Union, by subsidizing its farmers has made it hard for their counterparts in Africa, to sell to Europe. But the reformed policy of the CPA which has been set up to help farmers maintain their landscapes should, if anything, be commended.

One example of subsidy, and not particularly a major one, compared to other forms of subsidies, is the financial support to farmers who decide to go organic. They get paid on hectare basis for the first two years into conversion and even after conversion, to supplement their incomes. So the reformed CPA policy enables farmers take care of their farms, their landscape and the environment in total.

The policy change came about because farmers, particularly small-scale farmers, in some member countries appeared more and more to go sloppy on their traditional attention to environmental esthetics.

In England, for instance, according to the newspaper, The Times June 14 2007, there're some serious concerns on the shift of attitude: "Almost 40 per cent of the English countryside is in neglect or suffering damage due to development of former greenfield sites, a study has found".

"Many of the problems are caused by the poor financial returns from farming, which means that farmers cannot afford to improve the appearance of their land. As a result, empty buildings lie in despair, hedgerows are in poor condition, and woodlands are in decline." What per cent of Ethiopia's landscape, if I may ask, is judged in neglect or suffering damage? Your estimate is as good as the next person's, of course. The extent and kinds of damage to our natural resources incurred so far are far from exhaustively documented.

To be sure, various studies have been undertaken by government institutions like the Ministry of Agriculture and by various NGOs, documenting damages to the countryside. Possible solutions were also suggested on the basis of short-term, medium- and long-term spans. It is not, however, possible to say how many have been made use of, or how many have been shelved in some musty archives. The odds are in favor of the later, I would imagine.

An often-cited statistics here is the state of our forest. From about 40 % of forests cover a few hundreds of years before, perhaps, to less than 3% percent today. We must be reminded also that a good chunk of this surviving forest is concentrated in a small part of the country.

Thus it can be deduced that in the rest of the lands, forests as we know them, hardly exist. Come the rainy season, the rest of the country gets battered by torrential rainstorms.

Natural Ethiopia's extent of nature degradation is nowhere more acute than in the phenomenon of soil erosion. It is not a recent thing, soil erosion. It has been with us for as long as generations can remember and it must have had its beginnings at a moment when the 40% of the natural cover of the land began its long spiral downwards.

Undulating landscapes mostly, which have been farmed since time immemorial have lost their top, fertile soil, and others have even lost their sub soils. Such lands have long reached the point of no return. Their new use will be to produce trees, if that.

Farmed agriculture is said to be a function of well-kept farmlands. How do we plan to feed 80 million people if that most important part of the farming equation is overlooked?

Natural Ethiopia could in fact make good use of some agricultural policy akin to the CPA. Many farmers have nowadays access to small loans in the mold of some banks from rural Asia. But farmers cannot possibly make use of such a credit scheme when it comes to conservation of their farms or taking care of their landscapes. That is because, the loans are very short-term and don't target nature conservation.