Here is a video from Andrew Millison that talks about a gigantic agricultural project across Africa designed to keep the Sahara desert from encroaching southward. According to the information in this video, the Sahara desert has grown 10% in the last hundred years. The result of the damage and the desertification has everything to do with the amount of animals grazing on the land along with poor water management. Or in other words, they just get into a habit of raising animals and they don’t think of what’s going to happen in the future.
I think the takeaway from this one is about these two points. If you’re going to believe that agriculture is about meat, you’re going to have to raise your animals in a place where they’re going to eat grass but also eat every tree that sprouts along the way. If you do not have a full spectrum of agriculture growing, this is both canopy shade trees and mid-level trees and low-level shrubs etc etc. The point is that the plants will bring and store water to a region and we actually want this not only for the food security but also for the integrity of the land itself.
There are a lot of voices in this short film and there are a lot of points being brought up. Points such as the economic and ability of people to stay in their native regions because there is no work for them. This creates a move towards cities which of course means that people make their money outside of food production. Not only does this take away from community development and our attachment to nature, but it also creates a distance between human beings and their food and their home which is also a part of global warming. As we expand our business portfolios, we do so at the expense and peril of our land. Money is not the answer to running this planet or any other planet. We need to eat and there is no other argument except to how to do it sustainably both for ourselves and the land we use for our food production.
I personally think one great answer to this particular problem is simply to stop raising animals. If we do not care about meat, there is no reason to feed meat animals. If we do not wish to have animals grazing, we can make use of our land to grow things that will be food for us and also will allow the land to fight against desertification as the temperature rise because of all of the gasoline use in the city centers.
Nobody said anything is going to be easy and if you think digging 10,000 four meter half circles with only 150 people working with a shovel, you are not talking about easy work. This is not sitting at your computer and shooting animated people. This is pretty much backbreaking work but it’s work that you do for your community. And if it helps keep communities together, this would seem to diminish the hopelessness of life as well. Honestly, I just don’t understand how this is not the goal that we wish to make use of ourselves everywhere. This problem is not just in Africa. This problem is global.
