The concept of 'desertification' has been much publicised in the media and is widely taught in school and higher education geography syllabuses.

Recent literature suggests there is a need at the theoretical level to define the concept more carefully, and at the empirical level to investigate more closely the relationships between food production systems and their environmental context.

Much, but by no means all, of the work on desertification focuses on Africa, particularly the Savanna-Sahel zone stretching across the northern part of the continent from Mauritania in the west to Sudan in the east.

This region also provides the focus for this paper, since the author has firsthand experience of several countries in this zone, and the Savanna-Sahel has figured prominently in recent discussions on desertification.