Farm Africa and Prosopis clearance in Afar, Ethiopia

Prosopopis is an aggressive and fast-growing thorny plant that invades land, making it impossible to grow food crops. This video shows how Farm Africa has worked with pastoralist communities in Afar, Ethiopia to clear their land of prosopis so they can grow enough food to eat and sell and also produce pasture for their livestock to eat.

[@ncooty]

Are they cutting every tree or only prosopis? The amount of cleared land suggests that there wasn't a single tree in that whole area that wasn't prosopis. Isn't there a concern that the removal of all those perennial root systems will invite erosion, especially if the replacement crops are just annual crops that require plowing (e.g., maize)? I understand the need to remove invasives, but I wonder if denuding the landscape is the place to start.