This past January I was able to attend the Tropical Agriculture Development course at Echo World Farm in Ft. Meyers FL. Info on Echo here:  http://www.echonet.org.

I also included a blog post regarding Echo, found here: http://www.narrowpassagepermaculture.com/tropical-agriculture-development-course-at-echo-inc/

As a result of that experience, I was recruited to work as Agriculture Director for a mission work in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Sierra Leone is a small country in Tropical West Africa.

As you can see in the graphic above, Sierra Leone is in great need of development. I will be going there May 19 to spend time conducting research that will enable me to design an agricultural plan for a piece of land near Daru. This type of agricultural design includes building the soil without inputs such as machinery and chemicals that are too expensive and often unavailable or just undesirable, and placing plants that are productive and serve multiple purposes. Variety in nutrition is also an important consideration.

Much of the land in the tropics is degraded because of the harsh weather and poor farming practices. Agroforestry systems such as Alley Cropping (https://vimeo.com/87992512) and Syntropic Farming (https://youtu.be/gSPNRu4ZPvE) can enable local tropical farmers to restore degraded lands and grow a yield that provides subsistence to the farmers family as well as a market crop from surplus.

Degraded soil, West Africa

 

 

Inga Alley Cropping – photo courtesy the Inga Foundation

The process of preparing for the trip has been both very interesting and involved. Tasks such as the many vaccinations for things like Yellow Fever and Typhoid, obtaining a Visa, and research towards the project that is in conjunction with my Graduate Research in Tropical Agroforestry Best Practices at the University of Missouri have kept me busy over the last number of months.

I will try to document my work in Sierra Leone and post here in the coming weeks.

If you would like to support the effort financially (I am doing the design work gratis and there are many expenses), support can be sent via: PayPal: narrowpassagepermaculture@gmail.com  

  Checks to Michael Cooley  P.O.Box 45 Woodstock VA 22664 If you need a tax record make check to “Emmanuel Church of Fischer’s Hill” with “Michael Cooley Mission work” in the memo space.

Thanks!

Michael

https://www.instagram.com/narrowpassagepermaculture/

https://permacultureglobal.org/users/8798-michael-cooley