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Half moons allow water to be retained for agriculture and even replenish the groundwater table.

When the Great Green Wall initiative began in 2007, it was just a vision of a big, beautiful wall of greenery spanning the width of Africa to keep the Sahara Desert from encroaching on the rest of the continent. Despite years of successes and failures, celebration and criticism, we can see the progress being made as an inspiring example of how local and global collaboration can help counter the effects of climate change.

Just a few years ago, the Sahel region at the northern edge of Senegal was a "barren wasteland" where nothing had grown for 40 years. But the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and local villagers teamed up to regreen the area, bringing back agriculture, improving the economy of the people who live there, and preventing the climate migration that desertification ultimately leads to.

climate change, desertification, dry, global warming, barren A barren desert.Canva Photos

How do you hold back the world's largest hot desert?

According to Andrew Millison, a permaculture designer and instructor at Oregon State University, the Sahara desert has expanded by about 10% in the past 100 years. The idea behind the Great Green Wall is to build a barrier of vegetation to stop that expansion, which threatens the ecosystems and economies of the Sahel—the region south of the Sahara that separates the desert from the savanna.

In a video from February of 2024, Millison shared the collaborative nature and progress of one Great Green Wall project in Senegal, including the rejuvenation of 300,000 hectares (about the equivalent of 600,000 football fields) of seemingly unusable land.

- YouTube youtu.be

"The process started with the community-based participatory planning," WFP program policy officer Bakalilou Diaby shares in the video. "By the end of this process, it was agreed that one of the major actions is the land reclamation or land recovery project."

At first, it took some time to convince the community that the regreening of the degraded landscape was even possible, but after learning about how to improve the land, "the people believe and they are convinced, and they are also committed," says Diaby.

The "forgotten" half-moon method of harvesting water

One of the keys to this particular regreening project is using long-forgotten techniques for harvesting water. When soil is crusted and sunbaked and hard as cement, rainwater doesn't penetrate and it's impossible for plants to take root. The solution? Half-moon shaped ditches dug in such a way that water flows into them on the straight side with an embankment built on the rounded side to hold the water in. Each half moon is four meters in diameter and takes about a day for one person to dig.

Local vegetation domesticated on the Sahel thousands of years ago, such as sorghum and millet, are planted in these half moons, rehabilitating the land and feeding the local community at the same time.

"This is nothing new—we have not invented a technology here," explains Sebastian Muller from the WFP resilience team. "The half moon technology is actually an endogenous technology to the Sahel and has been forgotten over time. We have rescued it from the past."

Not only does capturing water in the half moons help with the immediate need to grow food and contribute to the Great Green Wall, but 10%—15% of the water will actually soak into the ground to replenish the water table, creating a more sustainable agricultural process.

"That way we actually achieve a balance of water. So we are not depleting the water resources, but we're making sure that we keep enough water in the ground for future generations," says Muller.

Other crops such as okra and tomatoes are grown in horizontal horticulture beds, and between those ditches grow trenches with fruit trees in them.

fruit trees, sustainable farming, agriculture, horticulture, regreening, climate change Fruit trees.Canva Photos

Engaging indigenous wisdom for sustainable farming

"This is just a very first step in this pilot," adds Muller. "We'll also be using other native species that will be planting in the pits that will drive the rejuvenation of the soil and the protection of the soil as the system starts growing into abundance and producing food and life for the people here."

According to Muller, the "syntropic farming" methods being employed were developed in Brazil and are based on global indigenous practices that mimic the way natural forests grow and thrive. These natural growing dynamics make agriculture more sustainable, continually replenishing the land rather than continually depleting it—truly a testament to global collaboration carried out at the local level with local community support.

"This project was really, really interesting because the World Food Programme wanted to demonstrate how you could take the most devastated areas and turn them back into resilient, food-producing locations," says Millison. "And they specifically placed their project on a very degraded landscape that had been taken down to bare, compacted earth."

If this desertified "wasteland" can be rejuvenated so successfully, it provides hope for recovering other land that many people might write off as useless or barren. As climate change continues to alter the Earth's landscape—literally—we'll need to keep working together both locally and globally to find solutions like the Great Green Wall and support their implementation.

You can learn more about successful permaculture practices on Andrew Millison's YouTube channel.

This article originally appeared in January.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash (left) and Dan Renco on Unsplash (right)

The staring is part of the competition.

A video of kids waving a narrow rod in front of a pig while hunching like Dracula and giving someone a death stare has taken the internet by storm, leaving people scratching their heads.

"What did I just watch?" seems to be the primary response to the video shared on the @dadsonfarms TikTok page, followed by various versions of "Where am I?" and "What is happening?" and "How did I end up here?"

The befuddlement is only matched by the curiosity and confused laughter that naturally result from seeing something so…unbelievable? Unexpected? Unusual? Uncanny?


How else should one describe this?

@dadsonfarms

Krew and Karis at The Revival livestock Show! #showpigs #pigshow

"This is the weirdest thing 😂😂🤣 I have so many questions!!!" wrote one person.

"Why do I feel like this is a staring competition and the pigs are just a added difficulty 🤣," wrote another.

"Yay!!! I’m back on hunchback death stare competition while also showing pigs tiktok!" exclaimed another.

"Again. What did I react to, to end me up here?" asked another.

If you've ever stepped foot in the world of 4-H or FFA (Future Farmers of America), you likely recognize there's a livestock showing competition happening here. But if you're a city slicker with no rural or agricultural ties, you may not know that "showing" animals is even a thing.

Not only it it a thing, but it's a highly competitive endeavor with specific rules and guidelines and expectations. It does help to have the showmanship requirements explained, however, and thankfully the kids' dad explained in a separate video.

The kids showcased here are Karis and Krew, twins who compete in the 13 to 16-year-old category of pig showing. The pigs are Smack Down and Greta. The reason the competitors stare so intently is to show they are paying attention to the judge and also to show how much control they have. (And according to one commenter, they get extra points for keeping eye contact with the judge the whole time.)

More questions answered here:

@dadsonfarms

@Lawrence Johnson I tried to answer all your Questions about showing Pigs 😊! #showpigs #pigshow

People have been fascinated to learn about how much goes into these exhibitions. Who knew pig showing was this intense? And with judges being flown across the country—there's an official Livestock Judges' Association and everything—this is clearly serious business.

Except when you add the music to it, it just comes off as seriously strange hilarity.

@dadsonfarms

Great night to show at western regionals #showpigs #hogshowman

So what exactly is the point of all of this?

When livestock showing began in the 1800s, the primary purpose was to improve the quality of livestock. These days, it's more about helping young people developing character qualities through programs like 4-H and FFA while learning about farm animal care and preparation for selling. They learn about responsibility, self-discipline, hard work and professionalism through these competitions.

And they clearly master making eye contact as well. You can follow @dadsonfarms on TikTok for more.

True

Milk brings so much joy to our everyday lives. It's the sweet creaminess in our cereal. The fluff in our scrambled eggs. And, for many, the last thing they drink before going to bed.

It's easy to forget that something most of us enjoy every day is also good for us as well. Milk alone delivers 13 essential nutrients that are important for adults and a vital part of children's diets.

While the dairy industry recognizes they still have a way to go, it has made an important pledge to work towards bettering the nation's environmental health.

Countless family farmers across the U.S. have committed to a more sustainable future. They know that it's good for the animals and also better for the planet.

"I love taking care of the cows; in taking good care of cows, we take care of you and it's better for the environment," Dave Graybill, a sustainable dairy farmer, and owner of Red Sunset Farm in Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, told Upworthy.

Thanks to modern and innovative dairy farming practices, producing a gallon of milk in 2017 required 30% less water and 21% less land than it did in 2007.

Taking a step back and looking at this progress on a macro level, the dairy industry has reduced its carbon footprint by 63% since 1944.

Now, the future looks even brighter because 37,500-plus dairy farm families — collectively working together under the U.S. Dairy banner — created new goals in 2020 that promise even more dramatic improvements. They pledge that by 2050 the dairy industry will achieve greenhouse gas neutrality and will have optimized water quality by promoting better utilization of manure and nutrients.

Farmers across the country have been working to meet these goals by reusing water, switching to sustainable cow feed, and repurposing manure for fertilizer.

The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy is inspiring farmers by highlighting those who have made a serious commitment to reaching the industry's 2050 goals. Dave and his wife Marie were recently named a 2021 U.S. Dairy Sustainability Award Winner alongside other innovative farmers from across the industry.

Since starting their family farm two decades ago, the couple has implemented more than 30 conservation practices designed to make it an environmental and economic asset.

"We have implemented a lot of sustainability practices whether it's conserving water, conserving nutrients, taking better care of the cows," Dave told Upworthy. "You can look at sustainability in a lot of different ways."

"Another way we work to decrease our farm's carbon footprint is through better nutrition and animal care to help our cows live longer and produce more milk through improved feeding practices," he added.

When cows are healthy, it's better for the environment, too.

The Graybill's farm has a 700,000-gallon storage tank that holds a year's worth of nutrient-rich manure produced by their cattle. The manure is then used to fertilize his crops, which are used to feed the cows.

"We're just recycling nutrients all the time," Dave said. "That's efficiency. That's sustainability."

They also practice contour farming where crops are planted in rows that follow the natural lay of the land to ease erosion across the field. This helps protect the nearby Chesapeake Bay.

Dave hopes that his award will bring more attention to the wonderful developments happening in the industry. "Lots of farms are doing it, but not getting the recognition they deserve for doing good in their communities and implementing these practices," he admits.

The incredible work the Graybills and countless dairy farmers across the nation are doing for the environment proves that there is room for sustainability in every curve in the circle of life.