Blog for People, Food and Nature

Land is the foundation of life. Humanity cannot survive without it. Land sustains us by offering soil and space to grow food, to filter drinking water, and to generate a continuous supply of oxygen through the trees rooted in it. Land connects humans with each other and to other life forms through the stability it of…

In Burundi, a large community of farmers represents a pool of knowledge that is constantly growing. Research institutions explore different approaches to tapping into this knowledge base and linking their work with observational data from farmers. Farmers in Burundi have a high stake in the viability of seasonal harv…

Wedged between the hills and valleys of Rwanda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the great Lake Tanganyika, is the small country of Burundi. The density of people in this East African nation is a close second in Africa only to Rwanda, its neighboring country. While its size can be a challenge, it can al…

There are a number of common pains and ailments experienced by practitioners conducting livelihood surveys, particularly in remote communities. Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on the Thrive Blog. It is cross-posted here with permission. Unplanned delays in questionnaire design and piloting, var…

The landscape restoration field ended 2015 with significant forward momentum. At COP21 in Paris, governments announced major efforts to stem the tide of climate change, such as the the 4 per 1000  soil carbon initiative, the Great Green Wall afforestation project, and advances in ongoing projects like the Bonn Challe…

Chia and quinoa seem to be predestined for Egypt. Chia and quinoa are dry and salt-tolerant crops. Both of them have a great potential to improve food security in regions that do not have enough water resources. “In march 2015 I visited the SEKEM Initiative Farm for the first time and gained awareness of the huge…