Adapted Grassroots Tropical Development

 

True development is only possible from the ground up. It wouldn't make sense to leave the largest part of the population behind, especially in most tropical countries where small-scale subsistence farming constitutes the backbone of all economic activity.

Here we present cutting edge agro-technologies practiced by ourselves since many years only with the means readily available in rural African areas - in the transitional zone between the humid and semi-arid tropics. 

By necessity as well as from conviction we have limited ourselves to the simple means we had at hand - which means machetes, hand-held hoes, spades and water buckets - without any machine based irrigation or tillage, with neither pesticides nor mineral fertilizers.

So we know from our own experience that our breadfruit trees are the hardiest and most reliable of plants - they survived practically without losses where most other plants have succumbed - enduring months long droughts without any precipitation even when they were tiny and yielding incessantly already when they had reached only 5 years of age. Now, upon entering full maturity about 6 years after planting, they are becoming extremely high yielding, surely surpassing all starchy tubers such as yam and cassava that are commonly grown, without any of the drawbacks of these plants, such as causing extreme erosion and necessitating very high labor input.

The same extreme endurance applies to vetiver, pigeonpeas, gliricidia, mucuna and all the other constituent plants employed in our farming system, once they have reached sufficient heights and densities.

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