Blogs

During a script-writing workshop, besides validating fact sheets, the writers went back to the field to share their ideas for scripts with the communities. Because once is not enough: you have to talk to several people to get a more complete vision of your topic.

In Carrillo, Cotopaxi, Ecuador, some of our script writers had interacted with the community for years. This village had a lot of experience with organization. The writers in…

Farmers may doubt the worth of an innovation, until they meet other people who have tried the idea on their own land. In 2015, the village of Korelach in West Pokot, Kenya, was suffering. The land was so eroded and degraded that it was getting difficult to raise crops. Many people were leaving the community. Then they got some help from researchers at the nearby University of Eldoret, who were looking for a community with challenging soil erosion problems. The researchers soon realised that the immediate culprit was sand extraction. Brokers…

As the world is waking up to address the challenges of environmental degradation and climate change, many countries realize that chemical fertilisers and pesticides are technologies of the past. While organic and ecological farmers use their ingenuity to keep pests and diseases at bay and to improve soil fertility with local inputs, the commercial sector has also seen the enormous potential to sell natural products.

Welcomed by…

Many years ago, I wrote one of my first articles, on “Coconut Coir Dust Mulch in the Tropics” and published it in Humus News, a trilingual (Dutch, French, English) magazine from Comité Jean Pain, a Belgian non-profit association that has trained people from across the globe on making compost since 1978.

So, a couple of years ago when one of our Indian video partners decided to make a training video on composting coir dust, I dug up my…

Agricultural scientists have long concluded that the seed of some crops degenerates steadily with each planting. This is especially true for crops that are planted vegetatively, for example through cuttings or tubers, like the potato. Degeneration is the buildup of pests and diseases, passed one from one generation to the next in vegetative seed, slowly lowering the crop’s yield.

A long-term study by Ecuadorian plant scientist, Israel…

Goats were household members in Europe from ancient times until recently. And goats are still important on family farms in tropical countries, because goats will eat almost anything you give them, including plants that are too dry and tough for pigs, cattle and even sheep. Goats turn waste into milk. Goats are easily managed by women, who can sell the milk or give it to their children.

But goats can be fussy. In a recent video, Kenyan…

Whenever somebody has a monopoly over a certain food crop, or tries to create one, sooner or later other people will pop up to compete.

The red onion variety, Violet de Galmi, originally comes from the village of Galmi, a small community in Niger, about 500 kilometres east of Niamey close to the Nigerian border, where it has been grown for over 100 years. Its pungent flavour and thick bulbs, combined with the vast, informal Hausa…

Farmers need to take decisions every day. Smallholders living in remote areas often have no one to turn to ask advice. Nobody tells them which crop to grow or when is a good time to plant. The Yapuchiris are experienced organic farmers on the Bolivian altiplano who started recording their observations on weather, natural indicators and their crops on a daily basis. Some have done so for over 10 years.

In this harsh environment…

Food waste could be made into useful compost, instead of mixing it with plastic and other inorganic trash, as my wife Ana recently explained on a panel discussion on Radio Cepra in Cochabamba. She was invited by a local NGO, Alerta Verde (Green Alert), along with two agronomists who encourage schools and families to make compost, and a student who is writing his thesis on urban families who compost.

The first two panelists responded to the concerns of city dwellers: how to make compost while avoiding flies, rodents and bad smells. Old ideas from gardening manuals were recycled,…

In the twentieth century, gardeners innocently spread the water hyacinth to Asia, Africa and elsewhere. Water hyacinth has striking blue flowers and was used to adorn ornamental fountains. But it escaped and was soon clogging lakes, ponds and municipal water supplies.

Water hyacinth is such a survivor that you can drain ponds, let the plants dry out and burn them – then watch them grow again when the pond is refilled. It’s not surprising that control options are limited, particularly in open water, such as lakes and rivers.

The plants can be hand removed, by people willing…