Alex James
As a working farmer, he saw how agriculture in the West African country
compares with the structure of farms in the UK and exchanged ideas and
techniques. The charity also created a small piece of Burkina Faso at
the Royal Show in July, showcasing how farmers in sub-Saharan Africa
are adapting to the devastating effects of an increasingly
unpredictable climate
What were your impressions of Burkina Faso?
Ouagadougou, the capital, is a thriving, hustling, bustling city. But Burkina Faso is second from bottom on the UN’s Human Development Index, which means that it’s about as poor as a country can be, but that isn’t the first thing that strikes you about it. What’s overwhelming is how wonderful it all is – the people, the landscape, everything. When it comes to Africa, we’re all used to hearing disaster stories – it only gets on television when there’s a huge problem there. We’re quite culturally separated from Africa, which is something I think we need to sort out – set up cultural links rather than making charity records and sending them money; it’s good to engage. And that’s what was great about this trip. I was able to share ideas and techniques with small-scale subsistence farmers there, and I found out that they’re actually using very modern sustainable farming techniques because they’re having to cope with climate change. I think about 80 per cent of the population are subsistence farmers. Poverty is pretty much the same everywhere: if you’re poor in Morocco, it’s much like being poor in Burkina – it isn’t that there’s a war on there or anything, it just isn’t very developed. There aren’t any big mineral resources there. There are other countries that come up as less poor on the Human Development Index, but that’s because they have huge mineral resources that are being exploited by a small number of people – most of the population doesn’t really see any benefits from them.
What are the problems facing agriculture there?
Burkina Faso is in a geographic zone called the Sahel, which is a semi-arid tropical savannah that forms a transition between the Sahara to the north and the more fertile regions and rainforests in the south. It’s gobsmackingly beautiful, and the climate varies between very hot and dry for seven months and then very hot and wet for five months. They get about a metre of rainfall that all comes in one go, so they’re trying to work out ways of hanging on to it throughout the year and cope with the persistent extremes of flooding and drought. Over the past 50 years, there has been a steady pattern of temperatures increasing and the rainy period gradually getting shorter.
How are the people dealing with this?
I went to see a new reservoir in a place called Zoungou – the whole town turned out to build it. They’ve turned 40 hectares of semi-arid savannah into a wonderful market garden – it’s amazing and so picturesque. It’s very different to the sort of intensive agriculture you see in the West. Looking at an English [arable] farm is like looking at a skyscraper – there’s definitely something beautiful about it, but it isn’t on a human scale; there’s something quite austere about both skyscrapers and English farms because they’re so vast. But here, it was just tiny little beds of lettuces, cucumbers, bananas and mangoes – it’s more like a collection of allotments.
What was the main purpose of your visit?
Christian Aid put together a Burkina Faso garden at the Royal Show that featured some of the techniques that are used by farmers there, such as demi-lunes, which are these little beds where you scoop out the soil in the middle and use it to make a little semi-circular mound that catches water as it runs downhill. The farmers also dig these huge compost pits as big as swimming pools and fill them up and make a ‘terrine’ of manure and straw – it’s essentially a big compost sandwich – and they sprinkle the compost into the demi-lunes and then drop in peanut seeds. They’ve also started to create something called rockbelts, which are very low dry-stone walls that help to catch water. Some of the villages out there have never had electricity, but Christian Aid is helping to deliver solar panels to charge up car batteries, which are then used to run lighting and charge their mobile phones. It means that people can trade for longer, that they can weave their baskets after dark, and the kids can study in the evening.
With what other projects is Christian Aid involved in Burkina Faso?
Across West Africa, a lot of livestock farmers lost their entire herds in a drought a couple of years ago. So there’s now a system where families that really need help the most – usually single mums, because HIV/AIDS has reduced the male life expectancy to about 45 – are given a sheep on loan from one of Christian Aid’s partners. When the sheep lambs, the farmer gives one of the lambs back to the project, which then loans it to the next person. It’s gradually helping people re-establish their herds. The thing is, having animals is like money in the bank – if something happens and someone in the family does get sick, you can flog a sheep to pay the doctor.
Do you think that any of the techniques you’ve seen in Burkina Faso are likely to be adopted over here?
Yes, definitely the composting – dig a huge pit and put all your slurry and organic waste in there, then cover it with straw to keep it incubated to help it rot for a year or two. Farmers get a bad rap, but they’ve been recycling everything for years. The intensification of agriculture was unavoidable really, and the use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers was a bad idea, but the organic movement is starting to address that, and it does make you think that British farming is brilliant.
For further information about Christian Aid’s work relating to climate change, visit www.christianaid.org.uk/climate
August 2008
What were your impressions of Burkina Faso?
Ouagadougou, the capital, is a thriving, hustling, bustling city. But Burkina Faso is second from bottom on the UN’s Human Development Index, which means that it’s about as poor as a country can be, but that isn’t the first thing that strikes you about it. What’s overwhelming is how wonderful it all is – the people, the landscape, everything. When it comes to Africa, we’re all used to hearing disaster stories – it only gets on television when there’s a huge problem there. We’re quite culturally separated from Africa, which is something I think we need to sort out – set up cultural links rather than making charity records and sending them money; it’s good to engage. And that’s what was great about this trip. I was able to share ideas and techniques with small-scale subsistence farmers there, and I found out that they’re actually using very modern sustainable farming techniques because they’re having to cope with climate change. I think about 80 per cent of the population are subsistence farmers. Poverty is pretty much the same everywhere: if you’re poor in Morocco, it’s much like being poor in Burkina – it isn’t that there’s a war on there or anything, it just isn’t very developed. There aren’t any big mineral resources there. There are other countries that come up as less poor on the Human Development Index, but that’s because they have huge mineral resources that are being exploited by a small number of people – most of the population doesn’t really see any benefits from them.
What are the problems facing agriculture there?
Burkina Faso is in a geographic zone called the Sahel, which is a semi-arid tropical savannah that forms a transition between the Sahara to the north and the more fertile regions and rainforests in the south. It’s gobsmackingly beautiful, and the climate varies between very hot and dry for seven months and then very hot and wet for five months. They get about a metre of rainfall that all comes in one go, so they’re trying to work out ways of hanging on to it throughout the year and cope with the persistent extremes of flooding and drought. Over the past 50 years, there has been a steady pattern of temperatures increasing and the rainy period gradually getting shorter.
How are the people dealing with this?
I went to see a new reservoir in a place called Zoungou – the whole town turned out to build it. They’ve turned 40 hectares of semi-arid savannah into a wonderful market garden – it’s amazing and so picturesque. It’s very different to the sort of intensive agriculture you see in the West. Looking at an English [arable] farm is like looking at a skyscraper – there’s definitely something beautiful about it, but it isn’t on a human scale; there’s something quite austere about both skyscrapers and English farms because they’re so vast. But here, it was just tiny little beds of lettuces, cucumbers, bananas and mangoes – it’s more like a collection of allotments.
What was the main purpose of your visit?
Christian Aid put together a Burkina Faso garden at the Royal Show that featured some of the techniques that are used by farmers there, such as demi-lunes, which are these little beds where you scoop out the soil in the middle and use it to make a little semi-circular mound that catches water as it runs downhill. The farmers also dig these huge compost pits as big as swimming pools and fill them up and make a ‘terrine’ of manure and straw – it’s essentially a big compost sandwich – and they sprinkle the compost into the demi-lunes and then drop in peanut seeds. They’ve also started to create something called rockbelts, which are very low dry-stone walls that help to catch water. Some of the villages out there have never had electricity, but Christian Aid is helping to deliver solar panels to charge up car batteries, which are then used to run lighting and charge their mobile phones. It means that people can trade for longer, that they can weave their baskets after dark, and the kids can study in the evening.
With what other projects is Christian Aid involved in Burkina Faso?
Across West Africa, a lot of livestock farmers lost their entire herds in a drought a couple of years ago. So there’s now a system where families that really need help the most – usually single mums, because HIV/AIDS has reduced the male life expectancy to about 45 – are given a sheep on loan from one of Christian Aid’s partners. When the sheep lambs, the farmer gives one of the lambs back to the project, which then loans it to the next person. It’s gradually helping people re-establish their herds. The thing is, having animals is like money in the bank – if something happens and someone in the family does get sick, you can flog a sheep to pay the doctor.
Do you think that any of the techniques you’ve seen in Burkina Faso are likely to be adopted over here?
Yes, definitely the composting – dig a huge pit and put all your slurry and organic waste in there, then cover it with straw to keep it incubated to help it rot for a year or two. Farmers get a bad rap, but they’ve been recycling everything for years. The intensification of agriculture was unavoidable really, and the use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers was a bad idea, but the organic movement is starting to address that, and it does make you think that British farming is brilliant.
For further information about Christian Aid’s work relating to climate change, visit www.christianaid.org.uk/climate
August 2008
