Happy Thought for 6 June 2025
Have a Happy Thought: With the right techniques, farmers living near the edges of the Sahara desert have been pushing back the edges of the desert, and growing forests and cropland. The main idea being used is what is known as a zaï – a half-moon-shaped, shallow hole. Let’s explore why and how this works. Anyone that has lived in a desert area knows that the ground gets hard – pretty much impermeable. And when it does rain, it often rains a lot at once. The combination of these two factors means that rain rarely soaks into the ground – it runs off the hard surface; even when it doesn’t cause flash floods, it can run fast enough that the water tears away any plants that have managed to put down some shallow roots. A farmer in Burkina Faso looked at all of this and, along with another innovative farmer in his area, decided to look for ways to help plants get a good foothold. Enter the zaï pits. It’s more than just breaking up the ground surface, and ev...