How rich the world is! and how poor we are making it.

manou
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

This man can teach you to read and write arabic. He can teach you the Hausa and Fulani languages. He can introduce you to Muslim paths to enlightenment. He can show you how to be a nomad. He can teach you to laugh more often and be light hearted. He is a wealth of knowledge, life, and love, and everyone in the world is. We will soon become dust again my friends but the world is such a precious and beautiful thing, let us be interested in it! May our interest in it lead us to love it, and may our love for it lead us to care for it.

The big picture agricultural situation (as I understand it) in Africa can be rather simply summarized:
In the past folks burnt patches of land to clear them and farm on them. When any given patch became less fertile it was left fallow for a period of time in order for it to regain its fertility. Population growth has made land more scarce and has shortened or eliminated the fallow periods, thus soil fertility has suffered. Overfarming, or under-fertilization, has been the result of population growth and it has left soils poor, less able to produce good yields, and less able to feed people. Thus, new ways of fertilizing the soil must be invented. There are many very effective economical agroforestry and manure fertilization techniques that have been researched by many an African agronomist. But until now expensive chemical fertilizers have been the 'solution' pushed on African peasants. Soils have become even poorer with the use of chemical fertilizers. Many soils have become dependent on chemical fertilizers in order to obtain even a half decent yield. That expenseive chemical system, which is out of the financial reach of many farmers, is failing. Soils are becoming dangerously poor..........