Photo: NigerTZai | Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-4.0
In the past 35 years, farmers in one of Earths poorest countries have added 200 million new trees, re-establishing woodlands across 12 million acres of southern Niger with little outside help. And no tree planting. The story of how they did it -- cheaply, serving their needs, and easily scaled -- is inspiring similar activity in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Malawi. It began with two accidental discoveries that led farmers to realize that plowed fields with no trees, introduced by French colonial agronomists, were causing ecological collapse. The answer was to return to how they had once farmed, when trees grew back from stumps and crop yields were plentiful. The movement continues to spread organically from farmer to farmer. Woodlands now may cover nearly 15 million acres. Senegalese farmers who visited Niger restored 150,000 acres of woodlands after returning home, and there are similar stories in Burkina Faso and Mali. Recently, trees were found regenerating naturally across 8 million acres of Malawi, a farmer-led phenomenon without government, NGO, or other external influence.
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