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Do you think your children will be farming this land after you ?
A few yars ago I was in Boni, a town between Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso in Burkina Faso, right in the middle of the cotton belt. During a meeting with some ten cotton farmers, one of them put a question to me: « What is meant by sustainable development ? » I answered him by another question: « Do you think your children will be farming your land after you ? » A heavy silence followed.
Then one participant spoke : The first time we grew cotton, we did not add anything at all, neither organic nor chemical fertiliser. We harvested 3 tons/hectare. But every year the yield kept falling. When we got no more than barely one ton/hectare, « we were told » to add chemical fertiliser. It was even given to us on credit. We did not get back to the initial 3 tons/hectare. We did not get back to the initial 3 tons/hectare, but we harvested more than 2. But then the production went down again, as low as 12OO kg/hectare. That is when « we were told » to use not only chemical but also organic fertiliser, for which we had to dig compost ditches. And this we have been doing for two years now. So today we are able to produce 2 tons of cotton/hectare. But what will we be told next ?
The question was directed to the managers of SOFITEX (Société burkinabè des fibres textiles), the company which sells cotton in the entire south west of Burkina and which has opted for Monsanto’s GMO cotton, the Bollgard I , also called Bt cotton. This GMO variety has however not lived up to its promise in India. The famous Bt bacterium also kills micro-organisms that are essential to soil fertility (See also the previous abc Burkina newsletter).
Today, April the 22nd 2010, the International Day of the Earth. I think of the many peasant farmers who have said to me during our discussions : « Our most precious asset is the land. If we do not have land, we are nothing » It would also be true to say « With land that has been destroyed, we are nothing. »
Therefore, do not let us wait for advice from Sofitex to make up our minds. We have received fertile land from our ancestors and we must hand over fertile land to our children ; Let us respect our Mother Earth and not do her violent harm with plants (like Bt cotton or herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup) which kill the micro-organisms in the soil and which will in the end destroy our her. If we show her respect and give her nourishment, she will feed us.
Let us bring her good compost, rotate crops, protect her with a blanket of straw during the dry season, let us give her water by setting lines of stone across the fields to retain the water and give it time to trickle into the soil… Then indeed, our children will be able to farm this land after us !
Koudougou, April 22nd 2010
International Day of the Earth
Maurice Oudet
Director, SEDELAN |
