One story widely told in the villages of Niger is that the transformation began when two young farmers returned late to their fields after working during the dry season at a distant mine. With the rains already starting, they planted their crops without first clearing their fields of vegetation. To everyone’s surprise, a few months later this apparent indolence resulted in better crop yields than their neighbors’.

The next year, other farmers in the small remote village of Dan Saga copied them, with similar results. Soon, dozens of other villages across Zinder and Maradi provinces joined in. Trees began growing widely amid their crops. REAd further from the source