Travelling around in Lesotho's scarred and treeless landscape, it's hard to believe that the country was once the grain basket of the region. Yet, during the nineteenth century, the kingdom exported food to the neighbouring Orange Free State (OFS) and to Kimberley and the Rand to feed the thousands of diamond- and gold-mine workers. The problems began with the expropriation of the best land by the OFS in the 1860s, which forced the Sotho to start farming hilly areas that had previously only been used for winter grazing. This process continues to this day, and you will even see crops being grown at over 2000m in districts like Semonkong and Mokhotlong. Mountains are no substitute for fertile plains, however, and Lesotho has been a net importer of food since the 1920s.

 

The ecological effect of the sustained and unrelenting cultivation of the Lesotho mountains has been devastating. The soil fertility has plummeted and, more seriously, huge quantities of topsoil are simply washed away with each summer rains, often ending up as silt in the rivers of the Eastern Cape. In many places, so much topsoil has gone that great ravines called dongas have opened up. These, though they often look green enough, in fact tend to be so close to the surface rock that they are useless for serious cultivation.

Efforts have been underway to slow this process for some time, most noticeably through the neat terracing of fields set on hillsides, with layers of grass interspersed with the crops. For one of the best examples of how simply dongas can be filled in or reclaimed, ask to be shown the way to the Musi family donga in the village beside Malealea Lodge . It's not difficult to spot - on a hillside of degraded cropland and bare earth, it's an oasis of fertility, lush greeness and birdlife.