Farmer El Haj Abdeslam and his three helpers spent years fighting soil erosion that swept away their crops’ fertile ground, taking their incomes with it. Now Abdeslam and many Moroccan farmers like him are saving their soil and their source of food and money using soil-conservation methods selected with the help of nuclear science.
“Year after year, soil erosion was making the quality of my land worse and that made my farm less productive,” said El Haj Abdeslam, a farmer from the Tétouan region, whose 5-hectare chickpea and cereal farm feeds his family of seven and is his sole source of income. “Since the scientists helped me to conserve my soil, my farm has been producing 20 to 30% more with less input, and my income has gone up.”
The method was introduced in response to Morocco’s more than 100 million tonnes of soil losses each year. The project included scientists from the National Centre for Nuclear Energy, Science and Techniques (CNESTEN), the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA) and the National Center for Forestry Research (CNRF). The scientists worked with the IAEA, in cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, to use fallout radionuclides and compound-specific stable isotope techniques (see Fallout radionuclides and the compound-specific stable isotope technique) to pinpoint erosion-prone areas in Morocco and evaluate the effectiveness of various conservation methods. Morocco is one of 70 countries worldwide that uses these nuclear techniques for combating soil erosion with the help of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture.
