How the Sahara Desert is Turning into a Farmland Oasis - GREENING THE DESERT PROJECT
This is so amazing and inspiring. 2 months ago I attended the Graziers Conference in Pennsylvania and saw a guy who was restoring the desert in Mexico by capturing rainfall and grazing cattle, and in 6 years or so, it turned from desert to prairie and the rains came more. Also there was a guy there with a company called Trees for Graziers and he was planting black locust in grazing fields and it was improving everything, and giving the cattle pods to eat in the fall after the grass stopped growing. The cattle beating their hooves and pooping and peeing does amazing things to the microbiome of the soil. The trees do other things like some shade, roots hold moisture. We just had farming wrong and this all can be corrected with education world wide. At least we can try. Traditional farming makes deserts. That's where the dust bowls came from in the US back in the day.
Giving local people the knowledge and the means to be proactive in improving the situation for themselves and their progeny is far better than having them wait in food lines and knowing their grandchildren will do the same. I will be watching for updates on the success of programs like this. Perhaps the ingenuity and hard work of the people today can undo the results of the greed and shortcuts of past generations.
Worth mentioning that the degradation referenced, here, stems from a 1970's decision by the World Bank, telling countries of the Sahel to convert their prime agricultural land to cotton production to finance their debts. Food production then moved onto unsuitable soils, pushing pastoralists even further afield. Voila, soil degradation, forest destruction and desertification, all of which produced the regional famines of the mid- and late-70's.
This is amazing. I never in my life thought I'd see a desert slowly become usable again. The people making this happen are astounding. This should be made more aware around the world. It's crazy I'm just hearing of it, yet Johnny Depp's and Amber Heard's trial is forced in my news feed everday. That just shows the mentality of most humans these days.
