Zaï pits

#MoveTheDate Solutions

Zaï pits

Personal / Community: Community project

Food sub-categories: Agroecology, Food security

Description: Zaï is a traditional farming technique in Burkina Faso. It consists in preparing the soil in the dry season by digging small pits in the soil, then filling them with manure. Attracted by the nutrients, termites that are native to the area do the rest, drilling galleries in the soil that retain water in the rainy season. Zaï has been used and improved upon by Yacouba Sawadogo, who created the 40-hectare Gourga Forest in the Sahel over decades of hard work in challenging circumstances caused by nature and mindsets. His success turning a piece of desert into fertile land has been replicated through more than 10 000 hectares throughout his country and has found followers in Niger, thanks to training workshops over the years.

Website about this solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaï

Video about this solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qduPCK8L4Jo

Why I love this solution: I love that Yacouba Sawadogo was able to defy the status quo of local curcumstances and mindsets, using just his ingenuity, his willingness to observe nature with humility, and his faith in possibility. No complex or expensive technology needed. Not only was he able to make an arid ecosystem bloom and produce more food than anyone knew to be possible, but he has been training others to replicate his success elsewhere.

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