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Posted February 16, 2006: On a map, Senegal’s
Petite Côte (“Little Coast”) stretches southeast
from Dakar, forming a smooth and subtle arc from the underside
of the Cap-Vert peninsula to the dense dapple of islands in
the mouth of the Sine-Saloum River delta. This 100-mile long
smooth stretch of white sandy beach has attracted beachgoers
and tourists since colonial days. Today, the beach town of
Saly is home to a number of resorts such as Club Med, attracting
European tourists and wealthy Dakar weekenders alike.
The influx of tourism over the past decades has been, as
always, a double-edged sword, providing economic opportunity
for some of the region’s local population while draining
rural villages of a much-needed workforce. This out-migration
of mostly young men from farm to city is commonplace not only
in developing nations such as Senegal, but also in farming
communities throughout the United States, and has been exacerbated
by trade liberalization. The dismantling of many agricultural
programs (such as subsidies, price supports, import tariffs,
and ag extension programs) designed to support farmers has
led to a rapid decline in the ability for a farmer to make
a living. As cheap agricultural imports flood the markets
of developing countries, selling prices drop, making farming
even less profitable.
One of the central goals of sustainable agriculture is to
revitalize rural areas, to protect rural livelihoods not only
through environmentally sound techniques, but also by providing
real economic opportunity for rural populations. Two men in
Mbour, the economic center of the Petite Côte, are playing
a central part in promoting this model of agricultural sustainability
through their entrepreneurship and educational activities.
Fish-kill epiphany
In the early 1980s, when they were university students in
Dakar, Gora Ndiaye and El-Hadji Hane began gardening in the
vacant lots that are home to the majority of Senegal’s
urban agriculture. Troubled by the excessive use of pesticides
in the city’s gardens, they formed AGRINAT, an organization
promoting organic agriculture and pesticide awareness. El-Hadji
remembers, “The turning point came one day when we found
that all the fish and frogs in the spring were dead. Someone
had mixed pesticide in the watering can, watered their plot,
then dipped the can into the spring. If it could kill everything
in the spring, imagine what it could do to the producers and
the consumers!”
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“My family was furious. You don’t
go to school and then go back to the farm. Now
my father is happy. He decided in the end that
I’d made a good choice.”
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El-Hadji went on to study tropical agroecology in Montpellier,
France. Well prepared to work for the government or an NGO,
he decided instead to become a farmer. Rather than returning
to his native Cassamance region (a part of southern Senegal
marred for decades by a separatist rebellion), El-Hadji purchased
10 hectares of land for a good price in Ndiemene, 16 miles
south of Mbour in 1993. “My family was furious. You
don’t go to school and then go back to the farm. But
I farmed and sent my father money just as if I was working
in an office.”
El-Hadji also chose this region because the problems affecting
Senegalese agriculture were more “visible” here
than in the lush south—soil degradation, outmigration,
infrequent and variable rainfall. Working with local farmers
and women’s groups, El-Hadji has addressed these issues
by promoting regenerative ag techniques such as cover cropping
with pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan, called poix d’Angole
in Senegal), alley cropping with agroforestry species like
the N-fixing Luceana in their millet fields and vegetable
gardens. He has also helped the farmers’ groups organize
and sell their produce in Mbour and Dakar, where the high
quality of their organic onions is becoming famous.
Most importantly, El-Hadji has helped the local population
take responsibility of stewardship of their land. “They
realize that thirty years ago this was all forest with lots
of wild animals. Now people are starting to understand that
the environment is being degraded, that they must take charge
of it. If someone else does it for them, it won’t last.
Now they say, “We must do this ourselves.’”
The activities of the farmers’ groups, as well as El-Hadji’s
prominent role in IFOAM (the International Federation of Organic
Agriculture Movements) www.ifoam.org,
have attracted visitors from around the world. Every year,
El-Hadji hosts several European interns on his farm. “Now
my father is happy. The farm is always full of interns from
Europe—toubabs [foreigners]. He’s happy that my
name is well-known. He decided in the end that I’d made
a good choice.”
Planting palms for sustainability
Up the road off of a sandy street in a residential neighborhood
of Mbour, El-Hadji’s old partner Gora Ndiaye is surrounded
by thousands of baby coconut palms in the nursery of his business,
the Association des Jardins d’Afrique (AJA). Tiny palm
shoots sprout from coconuts half-buried in the sandy soil.
While Gora’s gruff personality markedly contrasts that
of the effusive El-Hadji, he shares the vision of enhancing
the sustainability of Senegalese agriculture and making agriculture
profitable for the local population.
Gora’s work revolves around promoting the integration
of palm trees into both the natural and agricultural ecosystems
of the Petite Côte. “Legumes fix nitrogen in the
soil. By integrating trees and agriculture, we can create
a microclimate that is favorable to the growth of legumes.
The coconut palm helps to do this.”
In 1994 Gora began the first phase of his project, working
with farmers to integrate palms into their gardens. He quickly
realized that he needed some technical assistance when many
of their young Grand West African palms were ravaged by beetles
and a fungus. Gora met a palm specialist from Benin who invited
him to his country to learn more. Both in Benin and in Côte
d’Ivoire, Gora learned new germination methods and identified
resistant varieties of palm that he has since used in Senegal,
improving his production 100-fold.
The AJA has been selling coconut, oil, and date palms, as
well as the related rônier (Barassus aethiapum Mart.)
to customers from their nursery since. Selling for about US$10,
the young trees are a good source of revenue, particularly
in this tourist-intensive zone where there is a strong demand
from hotel and home owners. The pricey trees are still a bargain,
Gora maintains: “Coconut palms may take four years to
fully develop, but they will produce for fifty years.”
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“Legumes fix nitrogen in the soil. By
integrating trees and agriculture, we can create
a microclimate that is favorable to the growth
of legumes. The coconut palm helps to do this.”
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In addition to selling palms, Ndiaye through the AJA has
been involved with dune stabilization along the Petite Côte.
In 2001 they received a $50,000 grant from the UNDP to train
the local population to grow palms as a means of stopping
dune erosion. The organization also purchased a nine-acre
plot an hour’s drive south in the village of Samba Dia,
where they continue to experiment with palm varieties and
integration with field crops.
While Gora Ndiaye and El-Hadji Hane have taken different
paths towards promoting sustainable agriculture, education
is central to both of their activities. Both are proud of
their successes, but are also well aware of the resource and
economic obstacles that lay ahead, such as lack of water or
a lack of an organic marketing infrastructure. Nevertheless,
their deep-seated belief in promoting a socially-equitable
and environmentally sound agriculture keeps them both motivated.
“We just want to interest people in what we’re
doing,” El-Hadji says. “The first step is to show
them that we must approach things in a holistic fashion.”
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