Badroudine Ali, agricultural technician with NGO Dahari : "Abandoned land in Comoros now yielding good results"

Badroudine Ali (known simply as Badrou) is an agricultural technician with Dahari, an NGO based in the Comoros islands near Madagascar. Since early 2012, Badrou has been working in Adda, a village situated on the edge of the Nioumakele region on the island of Anjouan. Since he arrived there, he has worked to improve local agricultural practices and has helped re-establish crops in many previously abandoned fields.

 "I've been part of ECDD project since its inception in 2008. Then, I was just acampaigner. I went to villages to present our farming methods, to assess the context and identify the best farmers, those we want to work with to develop our new techniques. We had to win each other’s trust. In 2011 I was promoted to the position of agricultural technician, with many new responsibilities. In 2012 I was sent to Adda, the last village to be recruited by our project. The population got involved right from the start. Admittedly, we had already done some work in afew of the neighboring villages and Adda had heard about their results.

I immersed myself in village life to get to know everyone. I offered to be their friend, I slept at their houses, I identified the best farmers. We set up six demonstration fields, some of which are located in strategic spots, near schoolsor the football stadium. This attracted the attention of other villagers, intrigued by what we were doing.

Like all ECDD technicians, I spend at least 3 days a week there and I sleep in our makeshift office. The training always takes place in the fields. Most farmers can’t read anyway, so putting them in a classroom would be pointless. In the training sessions, I advise them to rotate crops to get better yields. I teach them about crop diversification and how to choose crops that fix the soil. These include fodder crops (legumes, such as Gliricidia and Sandragon). I explain that it makes sense to plant a line of grass among the crops. Pineapples and bananas can alsobe used. In addition to grass, legumes may also used as fertilizer and sometimes food for livestock. I have some training in animal nutrition, so I regularly give advice to livestock farmers. Branching out into livestock is always beneficial for small-scale, family farms : manure is a good fertilizer. With some farmers, I even developed new ways of getting fertilizer into the fields. On one farm, for example, we constructed a cattle pen on the top of a small rise in the middle of a field. We then dug grooves away from the livestock pen, out into the field. When the rain fell, the channels were filled with nutrient-richwater from the cattle which naturally infiltrated and fertilized the soil.

I am proud to see previously abandoned fields now with crops growing on them and giving good results, so much so that farmers from other villages not even involved in our program regularly attend the training sessions. We have reached more farmers than we expected.

The ECDD project has ended and has since been replaced by project Dahari, an NGO. What I want is to have more responsibility. I want to do monitoring and project management.But above all I wish that the entire population of the country will adopt these ecological practices, to stop erosion and protect our natural resources."

• For more information on ECDD visit http://www.ecddcomoros.org