“With the problem tree, I identified what was wrong in my household: the lack of dialogue, mismanagement of household assets, lack of vision and planning, and my husband who loves alcohol a lot and leaves all activities to me. […] With the solution tree, [I realize] we should improve family dialogue, break the fear of talking to my husband, and share the new knowledge acquired with him, because the PIP is not individual, it is a household PIP.”

6. Lessons learned for a different discourse

Results from both studies show the enormous potential of the PIP approach to mobilise farmers to stop land degradation and move towards resilience-based stewardship. Widespread conservation practices, better managed farms, enhanced food security, organized villages and farmers who are motivated to invest in their farm; these are all signs that the approach works. Results also suggest that the three foundation principles of the PIP approach – if developed and given attention from the start – mutually reinforce each other, with notably motivation driving stewardship (Ryan et al., 2003). By envisioning the future, planning activities together and seeing quick results, farmers realize that good land stewardship improves yields and food security, and become more resilient in all respects (knowledge, income, diversity, social relations, etc.). This change in mind-set and the rapidly growing sense of responsibility for better stewardship (Brown & Mitchell, 1998) is the crux of the PIP approach, and explains why even in the 3rd and 4th generation PIP farmers – who only recently created their PIP – effects are already visible.
Furthermore, the fact that everyone, even poor or illiterate families, are able to envision, draw, plan and implement practices according to their needs and capabilities, is an important reason for the fast uptake of PIP creation. The same applies to women, who are often among the best Farmer Innovators and trainers. Empowerment is the main guiding principle during trainings, and makes farmers more self-reliant, creates ownership and as such drives motivated action. Together with collaboration, empowerment also works at group and village level, triggering ‘conscientization’ which is essential in a process of transformation (Freire, 1972). For instance, only facilitating that information flows within the group of Farmer Innovators is already sufficient to start action, as they learn from others, realize that solutions are within reach, and feel able to do it themselves – and even faster with others. This is also observed in the process of Village Vision development, which is currently on-going in most PIP villages as a follow-up step to PIP creation at household level. Collectively, all kinds of action are undertaken to dig trenches, construct roads and plant trees. This is in high contrast with the usual wait-and-see mentality in Burundi, which is often due to incentive-based intervention strategies that undermine the power and initiative of farmers to act.
Working along the guiding principles of empowerment and collaboration is thus crucial. Farms in Burundi are extremely small, and as farmers usually don’t see any option to make a living from their land, investing in conservation practices is not a logical choice. This changes when the so-called ‘PIP fever’ starts spreading in a village, with PIP farmers telling others – thanks to enhanced social capital (Pretty, 2003) - how they have improved their farms and living conditions with their own means. These farmers have a different mind-set, are proud of what they have achieved, and are eager to pass the message that good land stewardship can actually enhance food production with relatively little extra effort. This attitude, this sense of stewardship and motivation to improve, are the core ingredients of a different development discourse on how to mobilize the huge number of farmers needed to stop land degradation at scale.
The third guiding principle, integration, is an inherent aspect of the PIP approach. The results and testimonies show how PIP farmers currently understand the importance of integration on their farm, and apply more diverse land and crop management practices, keep different livestock, and include cash crops and some income-generating activities. In all generations does PIP creation result in more diversified and resilient livelihoods, which is the essence of any integrated strategy (Ellis, 2000). Again, this goes along with enhanced collaboration, within the household (as many testimonies show) but also within entrepreneurial groups that have emerged and established market linkages to sell their produce collectively. That integration is understood and acted on is also visible in the initiatives that many villages are currently undertaking to collectively manage whole slopes to stop erosion.
Several lessons learned for a different discourse on how to stop land degradation in Burundi have already been mentioned in this paper. They all relate to the importance of the guiding principles for any intervention strategy, and the need to work simultaneously on all foundation principles; if not all efforts will be in vain. The five key lessons learned from the experiences in Burundi over the past six years can be summarized as follows:
  1. Empowering people drives change : the PIP approach facilitates that people become actors of change, by taking their capacities and knowledge seriously, by telling them a different “story” than other projects, and by changing mind-sets towards motivated action.
  2. Development starts at household level : the PIP approach facilitates households to visualize their common vision in a drawing and a plan, based on needs and aspirations of all family members, as such stimulating equity, togetherness and concrete joint action.
  3. Tangible improvements on the farm are key : the PIP approach generates visible effects and short-term gains, by facilitating that knowledge flows from farmer-to-farmer, based on better planning and integration of practices, as such stimulating good land stewardship.
  4. Mobilising people creates impetus : a crucial asset of the PIP approach is its potential to scale-up and mobilise whole villages, where collaboration, social cohesion and trust grow, and people genuinely participate in PIP activities and collective action.
  5. Impact requires engagement at all levels : in order to achieve impact, the PIP principles are equally needed in and applicable to staff of (implementing) organisations and (local) authorities, who need to become engaged and provide enabling conditions for impact.

7. Conclusions

This paper started with the question how to tackle land degradation at a wide scale in Burundi, and expressed the need to work from the bottom-up with an inclusive approach that empowers and mobilizes farmers to undertake action. A similar plea that “sustainable soil and water conservation must not impose models or packages but rather become a process for learning and perpetual novelty” was expressed already by (Pretty & Shah, 1997), but has hardly been taken into account since then. If only that had happened, because our findings show that the PIP approach is able to empower and motivate up till 80% of the households in a village to invest in conservation practices on their farms and collectively at village level. These conservation efforts go hand in hand with numerous other – often profound – changes in villages that work with the PIP approach, with most PIP farmers having become more self-reliant, proud, collaborative, and progress-driven. Visualizing a more resilient and productive future farm in a drawing and planning actions within the household, has given these families new purpose and a clear direction for motivated action. Families and entire villages have changed from being passive and aimless, to being active and motivated; a clear sign of sustainable change.
Developing the three PIP foundation principles conceptualized in this paper has driven this change, with motivation – next to stewardship and resilience – being most crucial for creating ownership and genuine engagement. This requires to refrain from the use of incentives like cash and food for work, right from the start and at any time. This is a major challenge for the modus operandi of most (development) organizations, but in order to achieve sustainable impact they must become facilitators of change. In Burundi this change started at the household level, but quickly resulted in collective actions of all sorts at village level. This potential of the PIP approach to achieve impact at scale is essential to stop land degradation, with particularly the farmer-to-farmer exchange of knowledge and passion for PIP creation being the flywheel. Following Hall‐Blanco (2016), projects and agricultural extension services must therefore abolish traditional top-down intervention and incentive-based approaches, and must urgently join efforts to build a foundation for sustainable action by farmers themselves.
It is this change in attitude within staff and institutions that underpins the different discourse on how to stop land degradation that we propose in this paper. The challenge to empower and mobilize the millions of smallholder farmers to undertake action, can only be tackled once development organisations, institutional donors and government agencies act upon this different discourse, and when all of them have a clear vision about the need to move towards resilience-based stewardship; from farms, to villages to landscapes. Although just started, Burundi is on its way to stop land degradation, supported by ever more institutional stakeholders who see that this is the way forward. Our final plea is to learn from what is being done in Burundi, because the core elements of the PIP approach are applicable wherever there is an urgency to create more stewardship for the Earth and its natural resources.