Vetiver Grass A Thin Green Line Against Erosion (1993) / Chapter Skim
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Introduction
Introduction
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, the use of which was virtually unknown. Greenfield located the vetiver plants growing beside a nearby highway.
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After that experience there was little question about which system to pursue. Indeed, the vetiver hedges succeeded so well at both stopping erosion and increasing soil moisture that sugarcane production quickly expanded out of the flats and up the slopes.
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There was no way to measure the exact amount; however, plenty of anecdotal information attested to vetiver's remarkable ability to hold runoff on the slopes. On one droughty Indian catchment, for instance, farmers found they could grow mango trees for the first time.
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The hedges are kept in neat, compact lines and are regularly cut to provide fodder, thatch, and other useful materials.
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Several states including Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, and Gujarat also initiated their own vetiver projects. The main constraint to the wider adoption of the method quickly became a lack of nurseries to keep up with the demand for planting materials.
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In other areas, vetiver barriers planted on more than 100 percent slopes were providing full protection against erosion and had been doing so for years. The only area where I noticed erosion starting was where people had pulled out the vetiver on the "riser" of a terrace and planted food crops.
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The Chinese agriculturists were so captivated with the vetiver hedges' promise that they immediately bought up every vetiver plant they could find and planted lines across 300 hectares of steep slopes. Initially, they used the grass mainly to protect the faces of existing terraces, but they also incorporated small trials to protect tea plantings on steep, smooth, unterraced slopes.
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In Fiji, for instance, the practice of burning cane trash after the harvest each year does no lasting damage to the rows of vetiver weaving through the fields. In fact, creeping ground fires usually stop dead when they meet a dense wall of the grass in its green state.
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Eventually, through word of mouth and the World Bank's Vetiver Newsletter and its handbook, Vetiver: a Hedge Against Erosion, others also were caught up in the fervor. Indeed, the excitement surrounding vetiver grew so much and the implications of using it seemed so astounding that many outsiders queried the sincerity (not to say sanity)
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