Working With Nature, Healing the Land
By Richard Minougou with Lise Latrémouille
January 2010

As a young man, Salif Gonde was forced to leave his village of Pobé Mengao in Northern Burkina Faso and migrate for four years to neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Working as a farm labourer in coffee and cacao plantations in those countries was the only way he could provide for his family of 14 children. When his father passed away, he inherited land and returned to his village with hopes of being able to stay home and farm to feed his family. But the drastic and lasting effects of the droughts of 1973 and 1984 had eroded and degraded much of this land, turning most of it into infertile desert that produced barely enough to eat.

About that time, Salif met people involved with APN Sahel – the Association for the Protection of Nature, USC’s partner in Burkina Faso – and decided to take part in some initial training on the conservation of natural resources for food security. He was skeptical at first. How could such straightforward land and water management techniques fix such enormous problems?

With nothing to lose, he first tried them out on a dry, half-hectare plot. Over the next six years, he planted a local grass, andropogon gayanus, which acts as a soil builder and moisture retainer. With this simple action, Salif was able to stop water erosion and considerably expand the fertile areas of his land.

Salif has been able to increase food production on his farm by 40%, enough to feed his family and pay for extras like his children’s education costs. With a proud glint in his eyes, Salif tells of the day he was able to buy a bicycle for his oldest son who works alongside him on the farm.

Salif is eager to share his experience and has become a strong advocate for farmers to use the techniques he continues to learn through APN farmer workshops. “We’re doing something that’s not happening anywhere else in Burkina Faso,” he says. He uses only organic fertilizers and local seeds to keep his soils healthy and productive, and avidly contributes to the local seed bank. These practices are his best bet against future disasters. “I’m sure that I’ll always have the seeds I need, even when the climate doesn’t cooperate.”

Salif admits that he is now on a personal mission to convince all local farmers to adopt these simple ways of using nature to heal sick and tired soils. “Without this,” he says, “young farmers won’t have anything to farm. And we cannot let that happen.”