WASHINGTON DC

Scientist said recently that income-boosting, soil-saving farming techniques could take root in tropical hillsides under a program that melds local knowledge with international research.

Home to 200 million impoverished people, the hillsides cover 9 percent of the world's land mass and contain 20 percent of its fresh water. However, the hillsides lose 10,000 square miles (25,898 sq. km) to deforestation and 13 billion tons of topsoil to erosion each year. Forty percent of the areas' 525 million inhabitants live in poverty.

The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) recently released a report that described a promising test project to conserve soil and water while local farmers earn more money. ``When poor people can't make a decent living, that poverty becomes a crucible for violence,'' said Jacqueline Ashby, research director at CIAT and chief author of the report. It also can push people off the land and into shantytowns outside cities. Soil erosion or water degradation on the hillsides can affect people for hundreds of miles (kilometers) downstream, Ashby said. ``It's a chain effect on the ecology.'

The report detailed a program that utilizes the higher-yielding plants developed by agricultural researchers with the knowledge and manpower of local farmers and communities, and computer-based geographic information systems that simplify the tasks of monitoring use of farmland and potential alternative courses of action.

One farmer gained access to better seeds and expert farming advice through the project. He put fences around springs on his land, assuring clean water would flow into aqueducts for downstream households. In exchange, local coffee growers paid for water tanks for the farmer's cattle, who used to muddy the streams. The farmer planted trees in the buffer zones and harvests a native fruit, called lulo, from the woods.

The report said 60 percent of the hillside area in the Central American and the Andean zone showed signs of serious soil erosion. Africa holds 40 percent of the tropical hillsides, Asia and Latin America about 30 percent each. CIAT plans to add additional programs in different locations. "It's amazing how far an initiative like this can go with very little outside financing," said Ashby.