[17] Once planted, maintenance activities such as applying fertilizer, weeding and gap filling, ensure proper establishment and persistence of desho.

It is recommended to use organic compost in the form of animal manure, leaf litter, wood ash, food scraps, and/or any other rich biodegradable matters.

However, after 2 to 3 years, maintenance inputs decrease substantially or cease altogether as the grass cover closes up and the plot becomes a sustainable fodder source.

To maintain the sustainability of the intervention, the plot is permanently made inaccessible to free grazing livestock; instead a cut-and-carry system is encouraged.

[23] Due to its rapid growth rate, desho provides regular harvests, even reaching monthly cuts during the rainy reason.

Once a year, just before the dry season, sufficient grass is harvested and stored as hay to feed the livestock until the rains return.

The results of the study showed that desho grass strips reduce soil loss by approximately 45% in the first few years of establishment compared to areas with no barriers.

[25] The desho grazing land management intervention has significant positive impacts on the natural environment, particularly when biodiversity is improved.

Moreover its massive root system strengthens the soil structure and improves water conservation capacities while effectively using deeper nutrients for growth.

[31] Due to rapid population growth in the Ethiopian highlands, traditional communal grazing areas are increasingly being fragmented into cropland to meet growing demand.

To start, the tools and cuts needed for planting require high cash inputs relative to that of free grazing.

[41] However, the advantages of using a local sustainable technology seem to outweigh the disadvantages, as the spontaneous adoption of desho-based grazing land management has been very high among farmers in the highlands of Ethiopia.