'Crescent moons' stave off starvation

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Women in Galma Commune in south-central Niger dig a crescent moon to trap rain water as part of a work-for-food program. (BARTLEY KIVES / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ) Photo Store

Forecast: Famine

• The suffering Sahel

• Hope turns to dust in Niger

• Vicious cycle

• Securing food for Niger a risky business

• Trees, shrubs vanishing from Sahel

• Fortress of food

• Paradox of hunger in Niger

• More mouths but less to feed them

• Diverse, yet peaceful

• Home, comfortable home

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A "crescent moon" is a shallow pit designed to capture rainfall more efficiently and allow trees and ground cover to return to denuded slopes.

GALMA COMMUNE, Niger -- Beneath a sweltering midday sun, women and children use pickaxes, hoes and bowls to scrape away at hard orange soil on a rocky hillside west of the town of Madaoua.

The unlikely work crew includes young mothers with babies on their backs, older women with remarkably defined biceps and little kids barely as tall as their shovels. There are a few adult men on the hill, but most are acting as supervisors.

To North American eyes, this looks like some bizarre form of chain gang. But these women and children are here of their own accord.

They're taking part in a food-for-work program that allows Nigeriens at risk of going hungry to receive grain in exchange for helping restore vegetation in this environmentally degraded African nation.

Work-for-food programs can take several guises, but today the women and children are digging "crescent moons," semi-circular shallow holes that have proven an effective climate-change adaptation strategy in some parts of the Sahel.

During recent decades, the short growing season in this semi-arid belt of Africa has become increasingly unpredictable, confounding the age-old planting routines of subsistence farmers.

In years such as 2011, the rains stopped more than a month early in many parts of Niger, leaving stunted crops of millet, the staple foodstuff. Other growing seasons have featured short bursts of torrential rains that carry away the crops, along with topsoil.

Since no one can control precipitation, the main adaptive strategy in the Sahel is to capture more rain, whenever possible. Hence the low-tech solution of crescent moons, which are arranged on slopes to capture surface runoff following rains, as well as any grass seeds that may flow in.

In areas where they've been dug properly, crescent moons can help grasses return to barren hills denuded of vegetation by soil erosion, overgrazing by sheep and goats and far-too-intensive millet farming.

At the centre of the crescent, villagers are encouraged to plant drought-resistant indigenous acacia trees, whose roots can further stabilize the soil. Protecting the young saplings from voracious goats can be a tall order, but the shallow holes can be effective even without the trees.

"No single (agricultural) technique can solve all the problems in the Sahel," said Jason Brooks, Niger director for humanitarian group ADRA, whose activities include work-for-food programs.

"What we're seeing here is climate disruption. Everything is out of whack. That makes the job of the farmer more difficult."

To bring more vegetation back to the Sahel, which is growing hotter and less hospitable to trees, grasses and crops, farmers also need to plant windbreaks, build low earthen dikes to capture rainfall on flatter ground, prune trees to foster the strongest stalks and get used to new, faster-maturing seed varieties.

Another adaptation strategy that involves capturing more rain is the use of "zai holes," small depressions in the earth for individual plants. Research conducted across the Sahel suggests zai holes can dramatically improve crop yields, when manure and micro-doses of chemical fertilizer are applied to the holes, according to the United Nations Environment Program.

Brooks said rural Nigeriens also need to diversify their diet. Farmers could eat more of the protein-rich cowpeas they typically grow to sell and get used to making flour from the nutritious seeds of Australian acacia trees, which are also drought-resistant. Acacia flour is apparently tasty and can be mixed with millet, if Nigeriens can get past the green colour, Brooks said.

The work-for-food program his organization runs calls for participants to build two crescent moons per day, 10 days per month. For that, they receive 3.5 kilograms of food.

The women and children working on the hill near Madaoua are short on food but not yet desperate. Yet their community has already been affected by the nation-wide food shortage, as most of the adult men have left to seek employment in places like Nigeria and Benin, said the mayor of Galma Commune, speaking through a translator.

Migration, another common climate-change adaptation strategy, comes with pros and cons. Villagers say the men often don't make enough money to send back home and some do not survive the journey. But without them, there's one less mouth to feed at home.

Such are the cold calculations of survival in one of the hottest places on Earth.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 12, 2012 A17