1. Introduction

With globally 33% of soils considered degraded (UNCCD, 2017), stopping land degradation while sustainably producing food is one of the biggest challenges worldwide (Bouma & McBratney, 2013; Diamond, 2005; Webb et al., 2017). This challenge is particularly pressing in a country like Burundi, which depends on subsistence farming on often steep slopes, and where the population size will double towards 2040. Already at present, with a population density of 450/km2, high pressure on the land combined with unsustainable agricultural practices is leading to wide-scale deforestation, over-exploitation of the land, and soil erosion (Eggers, 2006). Burundi scores second lowest worldwide on the Global Food Security Index (2019), with more than 50% of the population being chronically food insecure (WFP, 2019) and unable to meet their dietary needs (Niragira et al., 2015). Although soil erosion and its effect on crop yields are not new phenomena in this region (Dregne, 1990), current rates and scale of erosion are unprecedented, and urgent action is required to prevent the permanent loss of ecosystem services due to land degradation (Blake et al., 2018).
The question is what strategies can reverse land degradation and declining food security? Burundi has received considerable international development aid in the past decades, but hardly any progress was made in alleviating poverty and food insecurity. The underlying reason is that these interventions were often short-term, top-down and focused on conflict-resolution or emergency aid (Uvin, 2010). Currently, development programmes start paying more attention to agricultural production and land degradation, but approaches often lack essential elements of sustainability, such as building local ownership, capacities and motivation. Tackling complex societal issues such as land degradation cannot be done by top-down interventions or incentive-based approaches (Hall‐Blanco, 2016); because “Only the self-reliant efforts of poor people and poor societies themselves can end poverty…” (Easterly, 2006).
Hence, development actors should become facilitators of bottom-up and community-based development (Abrams et al., 2009), and enable farmers to tackle land degradation themselves. This article presents such a bottom-up approach, the Integrated Farm Planning approach, or PIP approach (in French: “Plan Intégré du Paysan ”), which proposes a different development discourse on how to tackle land degradation in complex rural-oriented economies like in Burundi. After conceptualizing the PIP approach in the next sections, the paper discusses results and lessons learned, and concludes by reflecting on the applicability of the PIP approach to stop land degradation and move towards resilience-based stewardship.