On a sun-soaked slope in Zvishavane, Zimbabwe, small farmer Zephaniah Phiri Maseko took stock of his degraded land in the 1960s and made up his mind to do something about it. Where others were suffering from erosion and watching their scarce water supplies being washed away by rain flowing downhill, Maseko seems to have realised the importance of collecting water where it fell to assure his long-term sustenance. He embarked on an elaborate exercise of digging a series of shallow pits, bunds, and terraces all around his land, with the sole objective of holding back the rapid flow of surface water and letting it percolate underground.
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