In Burkina Faso, rainfall is erratic, and without techniques like these, rain from a downpour would roll off the parched soil, leaving little nourishment for crops.
But where half moons are dug, the water is held in place, giving it a chance to seep into the soil, where it will better nourish crops.
When Tiendrébeogo first heard about half-moons, he doubted they would work.
“But through our experience, we are delighted to use the new practices because everything went well and it did not cost any extra money,” he says. Farmers don’t need chemical inputs because they can use organic fertilizers from their livestock.
Iowa farmers ripped out prairie; now some hope it can save them
“The reason why we have the best soil, making it possible to have the world’s best food production, is prairie,” said Lisa Schulte Moore, an Iowa State professor known around the state as the prairie guru. “And we’re killing it.”
.. Providing wildlife habitat for birds and animals on the decline is one of the driving forces behind a program called STRIPS — Science-based Trials of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairie Strips. Smith said he planted his prairie two years ago because he strongly believed in that philosophy.
.. “People who don’t work with farmers view them as curmudgeons,” Schulte Moore said. “But they’re savvy and very data oriented. They get it.”
.. When rain soaks the field, the deep-rooted prairie “slows it down,” Smith said, and allows the earth to absorb it.
Tests show that the nitrate level in water from Smith’s farm is substantially lower than water in the creek, Schulte Moore said.
.. How much time do Iowa farmers have?
The state’s soil is eroding at an alarming rate. Topsoil was an average of 14 inches deep statewide in the mid-1800s; now it’s about six
.. Iowa farmers lose about $40 per acre to soil erosion in a state where more than 85 percent of the land is covered by crops. “If you look at those figures and the amount of corn acres in Iowa, you quickly surpass a billion dollars of annual lost revenue,” Cruse said. Nearly a third of topsoil is lost in ephemeral gullies, swaths carved into farms by heavy rain.
.. Midwest states have to take responsibility for the pollution they produce, he said. “No one’s disputing that there is a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and no one is disputing that years and years of phosphorous have made their way down the rivers of the Midwest,” he said.
Out of Africa, Part II
Tell these young African men that their odds of getting to Europe are tiny and they will tell you, as one did me, that when you don’t have enough money to buy even an aspirin for your sick mother, you don’t calculate the odds. You just go.
.. After a series of on/off droughts in the 1970s and 1980s, the weather patterns stabilized a bit, “until about 10 years ago,” the chief added. Then, the weather got really weird.
The rainy season used to always begin in June and run to October. Now the first rains might not start until August, then they stop for a while, leaving fields to dry out, and then they begin again. But they come back as torrential downpours that create floods. “So whatever you plant, the crops get spoiled,” the chief said. “You reap no profits.”
.. The father started to tear up. These people live so close to the edge. One reason they have so many children is that the offspring are a safety net for aging parents. But the boys are all leaving and the edge is getting even closer.
.. Which means they are losing the only thing they were rich in: a deep sense of community.
.. Lake Chad alone has lost 90 percent of its water
.. Gardens or walls? It’s really not a choice. We have to help them fix their gardens because no walls will keep them home.
Scientists discover what’s killing the bees and it’s worse than you thought
In recent years, a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids has been linked to bee deaths and in April regulators banned the use of the pesticide for two years in Europe where bee populations have also plummeted.