Farming and the ecology of family

A report on trying to stop slash and burn traditional methods of farming in Central America.

part is the need for land by the hungry, but I know in Africa, the problem was that usually the farm fields got lower yields with time, so they were left fallow for the cattle and goats, while the village moved to better land, burned it off, and then planted new fields.

With the increase in population, of course, the land got over used and ended up a desert. This was especially true when corn was grown.

The answer? Fertilizer.

this guy is pushing fonio: a Sahel crop....but no answer on what is the yield? I don't know much about the Sahel, but there are a lot of different ways to try to get things growing there... the problem is that many of the tribes are goat and cattle raising types, and they have a long history of destroying the crops of the local farmers so they can graze their cattle. StrategyPage report on this in Nigeria, about the casualties of this traditional range war, complicated by the fact that the herders are Muslim and the farmers are traditional or Christian...

Our people in Zimbabwe grew sorghum and other crops that grew better with drought, as a back up if there wasn't enough rain for corn. But the yield was lower... and there are other traditional African crops of course.

I should note that in smaller gardens the women grew peanuts and ground nuts as natural fertilizer, and also grew squash, between the corn plants. And could use the crops for their own use. But because plowing required an ox, the men usually plowed the larger fields which supplied most of the family's food.

Of course, nowadays, men in Africa have long been encouraged to migrate to cities or work in mines, disrupting the family, since they live in dormitories, and the wives are left behind to care for the family's land, which is owned by the tribe, not by the family: if no one is left home to tend the land, it is taken from them to give to someone else. Also since there is no social security, the men need the family to keep the land so they can retire back to their villages.

Am I the only one who notices how modern society destroys family life by separating families?

On the other hand, as the saying goes: How do you keep them down on the farm after they see Paree? Who wants to slave hoeing in the fields 12 hours a day when you can work 8 hours in a factory and go home and watch TV or drink and sing kareoke with your friends at the local bar?

Here in the Philippines, ten percent of our people work overseas, and often the kids are raised by extended family.

But even in China, the kids are left behind in rural areas when the parents work in the city, because government rules limit who can live in the cities...Wikipedia article