Let it Grow

For some reason I always think it's cool when the bloggers I read regularly post while traveling. I like to imagine them sitting in an airport bar typing a something for the blog before jumping on a plane. So this is my own attempt at blogging from the road.
The photo above is a pretty typical of the landscapes in the Maradi region where I've spent the last few days. Millet fields as far as the eye can see, although there's other stuff in there too: especially sorghum and cowpea. What's remarkable about this view if you spend a lot of time looking at millet fields--which I do these days--is how many trees there are dotting the landscape. Over the past 20 years or so farmers in this region of Niger have begun managing the native trees on their farmland (primarily for fuelwood production) rather than clearing them off the land as was customary. The most obvious benefit of this practice is that farmers gain an additional and renewable source of income by selling firewood, but as I described in a previous post, there are a number of additional benefits to keeping trees on farmland. Encouragingly, this appears to be a growing trend in this country and it's attracting a lot of attention. See, for example, this article from the New York Times last February for a pretty good description.