Mahamane Larwanou works for the group African Forest Forum. Mr. Larwanou says the villagers who had trees grew more food and could also eat fruit from fruit trees. And they could sell wood to buy food.
MAHAMANE LARWANOU: "The populations of those villages really survive better than those who do not have trees on their own farm because they can cut wood and take to the big city to sell and get some money to buy cereals. And, also, they use the leaves and the fruits of those tree species just to survive."
In the past, the French colonists who ruled Niger had a policy of government ownership of trees. Not surprisingly, this policy did nothing to make farmers want to take care of a valuable resource that was not their own.
In Burkina Faso, a farmer named Yacouba Sawadogo became internationally known for growing a forest. His neighbors resisted his new farming methods at first -- they even burned his land. But later they saw how trees could protect the soil against the spreading desert.
His story is documented in a film called "The Man Who Stopped the Desert." But Mr. Sawadogo says in much of Africa, "Nobody is looking after our forests."
And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson and Steve Baragona. For more agriculture news and for English teaching activities, go to voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Bob Doughty.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25