A gang of 6 men and 19 women, villagers of Tlali, working to convert a bridle path into a 15 km road for 4-wheel drive vehicles. - - Soil Erosion in Lesotho. A small land-locked country, Lesotho has only about 400 000 hectares of cultivatable land. Rising in altitude from 1 500 to 3 480 meters, the land has long been subject to heavy erosion caused by severe droughts followed by intensive rainfalls, by heavy over-grazing, and fuel wood cutting. The average soil depth has decreased from 38.5 cm to 28.5 cm. In the lowlands there are about 25 000 gullies, some of them 20 meters deep and 100 meters wide. The UN/FAO World Food Programme (WFP) is assisting the Government of Lesotho in providing food aid for volunteers engaged in a food-for-work project whose aims are; to combat soil erosion and increase agricultural production; to upgrade and maintain the track and road network and; to assist the development of village woodlots. WFP commodities, soy-fortified maize meal, edible oil, pulses and canned fish are distributed to volunteer labourers who work for food as the sole incentive. Women constitute 90% of the labour force.