Our Faith & Farming workshops cover over 16 different topics, but for the Nyankpa community, “The Importance of Trees” was the most foundational session.
The Nyankpa live in an area about three hours south from Jos, Nigeria, in a region that is quite forested. But the trees are being cut at an alarming rate. Every day our team was there, they saw truckloads of firewood being carried away.
The Nyankpa farmers said that agents would come and bargain to buy all the trees from a large area for around N10,0000 (about N1,500 per tree). Malgwi, one of our trainers, pointed out that selling each tree – which had been growing for decades – was for the same price as about three measures of guinea corn they had grown in one year.
During the workshop, we asked the Nyankpa to write a list of local trees in their language. They reached 58 trees! The following day, we discussed one of their questions during the session on “Healing the Soil”:
“Our ancestors taught us that it is good to clear trees to farm. Is this still good?”
In response, we first brainstormed why their ancestors discovered that soil was good when forest was cleared. The attendees said leaves from the trees and dung from wild animals would fall onto the soil, decompose, and make the soil fertile. We helped them to think through how to get these benefits by planting trees instead of cutting trees. While too many trees on a farm will shade the crops and keep them from growing well, a good number of trees brings benefits: preventing erosion, increasing soil fertility, providing medicine, food, and firewood from pruning.
Together we looked again at the list of trees, and asked them to mark which trees they would like to have on their farm. They discussed eagerly amongst themselves in their language, and from the list of 58 trees they selected 30.
When we later discussed identifying leguminous trees that add nitrogen to the soil, many of the trees they had already selected were of this type. We saw their traditional wisdom – passed down from farmers in the area for generations – coming through!
At the end of the workshop, the farmers said they see now that they should not be cutting trees all the time. If they want to sell ten trees off their land now, they should make sure that they have twenty, thirty, or forty remaining – rather than just cutting them all.
