Land degradation in South Africa: Conventional views, changing paradigms and a tradition of soil conservation

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• This research was jointly conducted by the University of the North (UNIN) and the Northern Province's Department of Agriculture. It was funded and coordinated by UNIN's Land Management and Rural Development Programme (LMRDP), whose mandate is to conduct applied research on rural development topics in the Northern Province. The research was presented at a seminar during August 1997 held by the LMRDP and the said department It has been published, with permission of DBSA, in the proceedings of that seminar: ‘Sustainable land use: some signposts for South Africa’.
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• Respectively, Senior Staff Member, Centre for Development Cooperation Services, University of the North; Conservation Officer, Directorate of Agriculture and Rural Development, Department of Agriculture, Pietersburg. The authors would like to thank Solomon Ramakhumisa for his enthusiastic assistance in data collection, and three anonymous referees for their useful and constructive comments.
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