from thefreeonline on July 22, 2023 By Fred Pearce at YaleEnvironmen about E360.
As Africa Loses Forest, Its Small Farmers Are Bringing Back Trees
The loss of forests across Africa has long been documented. But recent studies show that small farmers from Senegal to Ethiopia to Malawi are allowing trees to regenerate on their lands, resulting in improved crop yields, productive fruit harvests, and a boost for carbon storage.
For decades, there have been reports of the deforestation of Africa. And they are true — the continent’s forests are disappearing, lost mainly to expanding agriculture, logging, and charcoal-making.
‘Africa is still colonized. All they do is invent a lot of money and lend it to doubtful ‘leaders’ in artificial ex colonies – Then cash in for ever from the CASH COW interest of the odious impossible debt. Sure your pension fund isn’t still sucking Africa dry?‘ TheFree
But the trees? Maybe not, according to new satellite data analyzed by artificial intelligence and a growing body of on-the-ground studies. This new research is finding ever more trees outside forests, many of them nurtured by farmers and sprouting on their previously treeless fields..
Across the continent — from Senegal and Niger in the west, to Ethiopia in the east, and Malawi in the south — smallholder farmers are rejecting government advice that trees should be expunged from fields because they get in the way of growing crops. Instead, they are allowing previously suppressed trees to regenerate on their land — to improve soils and crop yields; to provide harvests of fruit, fuelwood, and fodder for their livestock; and ultimately to achieve a better life for their families.
As large areas of farmland across Africa turn from brown to green, the results are also good for local economies, offering an easy and cheap way to intensify their farming and increase output, as well as benefiting biodiversity and the global climate. An acre of growing trees on farmland captures and stores up to 4 tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year, researchers say.
A study published last month found at least 29 percent of tree cover in Africa is “outside areas previously classified as forest.”
The latest published evidence of Africa’s resurgent farmland trees comes in the first ever detailed analysis of satellite images of the continent carried out at a scale that can identify individual large trees outside forests. Florian Reiner, a remote-sensing analyst at the University of Copenhagen, working with an international team of colleagues, reported in Nature Communications last month that at least 29 percent of tree cover in Africa is “outside areas previously classified as forest.” continues below…
Vandana Shiva’s Who Really Feeds the World
‘Farmers are plant breeders and seed savers, soil conservators and soil builders, water preservers and water keepers. Farmers are food producers. While using only 30 percent of the world’s resources, small-scale farmers provide 70 percent of the planet’s food. Small-scale famers, farming families, and gardeners feed us.‘
Continue reading “Africans Planting Revolution – Small Farmers still FEED the World –”
The Free 