We are also forced to use pesticides. Through the Food Forest project, we are transforming and encouraging the growth of more plants, which also feeds us as a community. And we can use the same piece of land every time. The entire community is part of this transition. “
carbon
Mike Hands is a tropical ecologist and Inga Foundation in neighboring Honduras. He works closely with local communities to fight deforestation by promoting an agroforestry system called inga hutong planting.
Watching entire forests smoke was a difficult experience during field research in Africa in the 1980s, as farmers used slash-and-burn techniques to grow crops.
Hans recalled seeing “large swathes of forest replaced by grass.” Today, about 7 percent of the world’s population uses slash-and-burn farming. Fires release carbon stored by trees back into the atmosphere at an alarming rate.
“In the humid tropics, there is hardly any sustainable agriculture. This is the problem I was trying to solve in the eighties. Why is this happening?” Hand asked.
Inca
“You have the most biologically successful ecosystem in the rainforest, but people are turning to slash and burn. It doesn’t work. It keeps people in poverty.”
The agroforestry system that Hands helped promote is based on the use of inga, which is grown as a companion plant along with other crops such as cocoa and coffee. Hands explained that the Inca “disappeared in the background and could become something that farmers sold.”
Since the inca is a nitrogen-fixing and fruiting tree, it provides nutrients to the soil, protects the root system and acts as a natural pest control. It also provides firewood, which prevents villagers from invading the forest.
“For the first time, people were able to grow crops again,” Hands said. “It’s a breakthrough.”
He added: “We tell farmers we can give them everything they need, but they have to wait two years for a successful harvest. But even knowing that, they still want the system.”
Garden of Eden
The pilot program has now demonstrated the resilience of inga hutong planting during storms, including climatic El Niño events. Inca alleys have proven to be more resistant to changing weather patterns.
“El Niño destroyed every peak of conventional crops on these slopes, followed by nine weeks of drought, and most conventional harvests on the slopes failed. The only crops that survived were in the inga alley,” Hands said.
Seeing the success of the conspiracy, many neighboring homes turned to the technology.
“We are now witnessing a large number of households that are self-transmitting. We now have about 700 households implementing inga alleys,” Hands said.
Funded by organizations such as Kew and the Eden Project, the foundation currently has more than 75,000 seedlings, including cacao, rambutan, mahogany and, of course, Inca.
Rich
In general, forest gardens are considered an ancient practice that has historically sustained communities around the world. In the Amazon, recent research by scientists shows that the remnants of these indigenous farming techniques have left their mark on the forests as they are today.
Including “increased relative abundance and abundance of domesticated species in and out of forests” [pre-Columbian] archaeological site”, according to an article in the journal Science.
Another study in the eastern Amazon, published in the journal Nature Plants, showed that the adoption of polyculture agroforestry began around 4,500 years ago, when the development of complex societies “combined the cultivation of multiple annual crops with the progressive enrichment of edible forest species. and development of aquatic resources”.
Food shortages are an inevitable part of the loss of diversity as agricultural systems crumble under climate collapse. The work of these two projects shows that the use of agroforestry techniques in place of monoculture can provide a powerful and resilient solution that helps nourish the soil and feed the mouth.
this author
Yasmin Dahnoun is ecologist. This article was first published in Renaissance and Ecologists magazine, this is come out now.
to know more information: www.contourlines.org and www.ingafoundation.org
