INTRODUCTION
Diagnostic survey revealed that very minimal local measures on soil erosion were being used to minimize the problem. These were not practiced widely mainly because of the budget constraint and lack of technical know-how. Although, the land holding is relatively high, the effective cultivatable area is very small and top soil was loosing rapidly resulting in low farm production thus creating vicious circle of poverty in the village.
Hence, local institution for sustainable land management was formed to tackle the root cause of poverty in the village with the financial support from the GEF, Small Grant Programme, UNDP and technical support from RNRRC, Bajo in collaboration with the Dzongkhag RNR sector.

GENERAL PROJECT INPUTS
The major problem of Salamjee village was land degradation that has taken place in various forms such as landslides, gully formation, sheet and rill erosions and declining soil fertility. The main causes of the degradation are steep slope, exposed soil after land preparation and high intensity rainfall, lack of awareness by the community on the issues of land degradation process and limited technical know-how to counteract the problem.


METHODOLOGY
The livelihood resilience and natural resources generation are interrelated; therefore the project adopted the holistic approach to accomplish the planned activities. As the village is remotely located, the farmers lack know-how on land rehabilitation on the fast deteriorating valuable land. As such, the capacity building was considered as an important component of the project. The project gradually built on the local practices rather than targeting an overnight changes like the conventional capital-intensive project approaches. The decision to make changes or evolve the local practices was driven by the interest of the local people themselves. Therefore, the long-term strategy of the project was to institutionalize farmland rehabilitation as part of farming system for sustaining the process in future. The immediate strategy was to implement the activity that minimizes the land degradation problems in the village and work on developing strategies to prevent such problems in the future.

APPROACHES
The key aspect of the approach was to apply the concepts and principle of participation, decentralization and empowerment. This bottom-up approach allowed the community to design a project that directly addressed their issues. The implementer?s role was to facilitate in diagnosing, designing, action planning, resource management until implementation and monitoring. The multi-disciplinary team consisting of researchers (forestry, water management, horticulture, livestock, and soil science) and extensions (agriculture, forestry and livestock sector) was formed to assist the Salamjee Community to sustain their livelihood sources, and facilitate the planned activities for collective management of farmland in the village.

CAPACITY BUILDING
The project took up capacity building and institutional development as an important component throughout the project period.

The list of Trainings held were:
1. Development of local sustainable land management institution;
2. Land Management Technologies;
3. Citrus Nursery Raising and Management;
4. Patch and T-budding on citrus;
5. Promotion of nutritional diet through backyard kitchen gardening;
6. Nursery raising and management of MPTs;
7. Tree plantation and management;
8. Promoting the plantation of native species of edible shoot bamboos;
9. Farmers study tour and awareness on SLM activities;
10. Pest disease identification and their control measures;
11. Workshop on forest resource mapping;
12. Pasture development and management.

Methodologies engaged for the training were:
? Awareness on causes and types of land degradation
? Pictorial presentation of available land management technologies
? Group work/discussions and presentation of land management problems
? Role-play games
? Field visit and site verification in the village and field practical
? Active participation of the community in developing the whole scenario

Available technologies presented to the farmers include:
? Use of A-frame and T-Frame
? Alley cropping/hedgerow plantation
? Contour plantation
? Stone wall
? Strip plantation
? Bench terracing
? Brush layering
? Wattling
? Boundary plantation
? Diversion channel
? Conservation Farming
? Multi story cropping
? Maize trash line
? Gully treatment using different check dams

Technologies selected by the farmers:
? Use of A-frame and T-frame
? Alley cropping/hedgerow plantation
? Stone wall
? Contour plantation
? Strip plantation
? Boundary plantation
? Diversion channel
? Gully treatment
? Conservation farming through orchard development
? Maize trash line
? Multi story system

The A-frame is a key for the start of land development activities in the upland areas for determining the contours. Therefore, the advantage of the use of A-frame was introduced to the farmers and trained individual farmer to construct the A-frame. The community were also taught in the field on how and where to apply the A-frames.

Despite the uses of the A-frame, different selected technologies were demonstrated in the field covering an area of around 2 acres. They were also given the deeper idea on selection of the technology as per the needs of the area. Thorough monitoring and guidance were rendered to them during the hands-on training so that individual farmers understand the basic concept on use of every land management technologies. Active community participation in the whole process was our key step for achieving the goal. Their indigenous knowledge and local ideas were highly respected and blended with the new ideas, so as not to intervene and discourage them with the imported technologies.

PROMOTION OF NUTRITIONAL DIET THROUGH BACKYARD KITCHEN GARDENING
Keeping in view the main objectives as sustainable land management program, the focus was also given on crop diversification to build up the livelihood of the rural farmers and generate the cash income. Although the climate is conducive for growing various vegetables in salamjee, they were left with very limited choices of vegetables available in the village. Vegetable cultivation in salamjee was limited to very few local varieties. Farmers used to depend on vegetables either bought from market (Damphu or Sunkosh) or collected from the forest. The vegetable promotional programme was initiated almost parallel with the land management activities. The farmers were trained on growing of different vegetable varieties in their backyard kitchen gardening. Different varieties of vegetables were introduced to the village and the seeds were distributed to the individual farmers. The farmers are also trained on growing of the winter vegetables with the use of the polytonal. One of the promising off-season vegetable was producing off-season Bhutanese chilli which fetches very good price in the market.

The group was also briefed on management aspects of the vegetables such as irrigation, mulching and weeding.

REHABILITATION OF NEARBY DEGRADED FOREST THROUGH PLANTATION

There is a strip of state forest running between the upper and lower Salamjee. Bushes without any good trees cover the area. Seeing the potential of this area as green belt for preventing landslides in future, farmers wanted to plant trees in this area. As such, the plantation initiated with planting of 2 to 3 hundred tree saplings annually training the groups on planting techniques and management. The seedlings were supplied from RC Bajo forestry sector.
The plantation not only rehabilitates the areas but in turn, the community benefits from the plantation in the end. The plantation caters the needs of the community such as fodder, fuel-wood, timber and other non-timber forest products. The forest cover near the village is poor, and the existing small patch of forest is along the steep areas where by the felling and extraction is restricted purely for the protection.

COMMUNITY'S INPUT
The salamjee sustainable land management group has a greater contribution in successful completion of this farmland management project. During the implementation phase of the proposed project activities community contributions were maximized in terms of labour contribution to carry out all the physical activities. So if we convert their labour contribution in terms of mandays, just to carry out contouring and constructing stone risers the total of 414 labours per household for three years have been utilized, which excludes plantation, nursery management, and other physical works that requires intensive labours. Besides this The Salamjee Phashing Zingchoung Tshogpa also handled all the administrative and financial power of the project and functioned as a decentralized administrative body.
Their active participation from planning until implementation in a collective approach has led to become one of the successful and exemplary farmland management sites in the country.