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Posted May 11, 2006: In the long dry season,
which lasts from October to June, the scrubland savanna of
Senegal’s Peanut Basin appears brown and parched. It
is a postcard image of the Sahel, with its dusty daguerreotype
haze, its sandy horizon marked by silhouettes of gargantuan
baobab trees and thorny acacias, the bristly halos of sump
and jujube shrubs. It’s difficult to imagine that this
desertscape could feed a nation, or can even feed the countless
goats and short-haired sheep that somehow manage to sustain
themselves on the stubble.
Then, following the first rains in June, the new growth of
grass gives the landscape a greenish patina; leaves begin
to gild the scraggly, skeletal trees. In a few months, after
the frenzy of farmers’ activity in the fields—from
the application of manure, to the sowing of peanuts, millet,
and cowpeas—the landscape transforms completely from
a wasteland into a three-meter deep sea of green millet backlit
by a cerulean sky framed with towering cumulus thunderheads.
Only three months later, after the entire year’s rain—12
to 24 inches—has fallen, all the millet and peanuts
harvested and the residues grazed down, the land returns to
its barren state.
Nestled into this geography are thousands of tiny rural villages,
home to more than half of Senegal’s population. These
sites are woven together by a network of sandy tracks, extensive
kinship ties, and weekly markets in the larger villages. Thiawène
is one such village, located in the Diourbel region, a good
17 miles from the nearest paved road.
The main “square” of Thiawène is home
to a small mosque, a 295-foot deep well shared by 12 surrounding
villages, and the penc, or Conversation Tree, an ancient baobab
under which meetings and idle chit-chat alike take place,
scarred from years of being girdled for its fibrous bark.
Young boys play soccer with acrobatic agility. Household compounds
lie behind fences of millet stalk or rusty, recycled corrugated
roofing tin.
Inside Fatou Kane’s compound, three generations of
women and girls chat as the younger ones pound millet in a
giant wooden mortar. Walking behind one of the houses walled
with millet stalks and covered with a tin roof, she leads
us to a small wooden corral out back, where small white lambs
nurse a ewe. “Everybody practices embouche here now.
People from other villages come here to learn about it,”
she says.
Embouche is the French word for the technique of fattening
livestock, practiced here by confining it for several months
before selling it for meat. In addition to providing the farmer
with additional revenue, livestock serve as a form of interest-accruing
equity for Thiawène farmers, as elsewhere in the agrarian
world. Animals are left to reproduce, thus increasing the
herd size, or they can be sold for cash in times of need.
Additionally, animal manure is a valuable—and often
the only—means of maintaining soil fertility in the
Sahel. Annual applications of manure to the sandy soil provide
much-needed organic matter to fields. In addition to preventing
theft, corralling of animals at night allows for the easy
collection of manure for composting or field application.
While Fatou Kane and other women in Thiawène have
always tended livestock, they have managed them more carefully
in the last four years thanks to a program carried out by
The Rodale Institute and funded by the Vanderbilt Foundation.
“They taught me to take care of the animal’s health,
and feed it correctly. I also now know what to look for when
buying an animal to make sure it’s healthy,” she
says.
Traditionally, farmers sent their livestock out to graze
fallow fields during the day, either under the watch of children
or a contracted herder. As fallowing has become more and more
rare due to population increases and a subsequent intensification
of farming, livestock husbandry has decreased in Thiawène
and other Peanut Basin villages. The recent interest in livestock
fattening has helped to revitalize the symbiotic relationship
between livestock and field crops. Rather than letting the
animals roam free throughout the day in the traditional manner,
Fatou keeps the animal in the corral behind the house, feeding
it high-protein peanut and cowpea stover along with food scraps
and crops residues. She rakes the manure daily into a compost
pile or directly to the family fields.
When asked if stabling livestock was more labor intensive
than traditional livestock management, she replies, “Dina
yokku tutti rekk. / It’s only a little bit of trouble,”
she says smiling. “It’s worth it. We have had
the best millet yields ever this year.” Additionally,
the sale of one of her lambs this year netted her about $44.
“I was able to pay for my son’s driver’s
license with that money.”
Ndeye Diop, president of the Thiawène women’s
group, has also been practicing embouche for the last three
years. In addition to being able to sell an animal in times
of need, she looks forward to having sheep to sell at Tabaski,
or Eid-al-Kibr, Muslim West Africa’s biggest feast day
when most families slaughter a ram to celebrate Abraham’s
sacrificial offering to God. This is the most profitable time
to sell animals in Senegal, when the demand is high. Ndeye
has made up to $100 selling fattened animals.
Like Fatou Kane, Ndeye Diop finds herself mentoring others.
“Now all the young people return from working in Dakar
and Thiès. They want a sheep in time for Tabaski, so
they buy young animals and fatten them. I go around and help
them, let them know if the stable roof is too low, if the
house will get too hot.”
For most farmers in Thiawène, finding nutritious feed
throughout the year is a challenge. Ndeye says, “If
there is enough rain we don’t have a problem, but if
there is a drought, we have to buy additional feed.”
The village women’s group helps subsidize supplemental
concentrated feed for members. Ibra Diop, one of the few men
in Thiawène who practices animal fattening, adds that
veterinary care is one of the greatest limitations to animal
production in the village. “If the animal gets sick,
I have to put it on a cart, get to the road, then I have to
get transportation to Bambey or Toubatou.”
For most farmers, however, the benefits outweigh the costs.
Awa Mbaye, who has raised several goats since the embouche
program began, proudly shows off the section of her millet
field that she fertilized with goat compost. “The millet
here is taller, darker, healthier.” She also says that
since she has been applying manure collected from the corrals
to the fields, her peanuts have developed more fully. “They
are fatter.” While Awa’s primary reason for raising
livestock is the manure, she adds that embouche has allowed
her to better take care of her financial needs. “I never
have to borrow money now.”
By integrating livestock more intensively into their crop
production systems, farmers in Thiawène have created
an economic safety net for themselves, while improving food
production and food security. “Baax na dè! /
It’s great!” says Ndeye. “We’re increasing
our income and our knowledge.” 
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