But We Make It Fertile:
Afrikan Ways of Building Healthy Black Soils
Most natural farming practices are born out of the culture of a given ethnic group. For example, contemporary composting methods are from Britain by way of India. The fermented solutions of Korean Natural Farming were inspired by the garden boosting effects of leftover kimchi juice.
When we build healthy black soils, what cultural information do we have to guide us? How does this cultural information translate into agricultural technique? Instead of turning compost piles, how can we leverage life to transform our wastes into natural resources?
Attendees will learn:
1) Brief histories of well known natural farming practices,
2) Early formulations of the Tenets of Eko Nipa Iroko, and
3) How to create more life to create healthy black soil.
What an honor it is to present, after sitting at the feet of the organizers and presenters of the BSS for several years. I may have overwhelmed people in attendance with the amount of information that I have been so excited to share. Below contains the resources that I shared in the slides.
Resources
- Uprooting Cassava
- Podcast episodes:
- Articles / Pages
- Korean Natural Farming – Fermented Plant Juice
- The importance of Gau Mata (Holy Mother)
- Ram Guha is wrong. Gandhi went from a racist young man to a racist middle-aged man
- Coming to terms with Ghandi’s complicated legacy
- Dr. Carver’s Bulletins
- The Origins of Yoga, Part III
- The yogi as hermit, warrior, criminal and showman
- International Symposium on Black Soils 2018
- International Network of Black Soils
- The 5th African Soils Partnership Plenary meeting
- International Forum on Black Soil Conservation
- Books
- The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming (New York Review Books Classics)
- JADAM Organic Farming: ULTRA Powerful Pest and Disease Control Solution, Make all-Natural Pesticide, The way to Ultra-Low-Cost agriculture!
- Sir Albert Howard’s An Agricultural Testament
- Land and Power: Sustainable Agriculture and African Americans
- Our People’s Wisdom
- Podcast Episodes
- Articles
- A Second Series of the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians
- “God made the soil, but we made it fertile”: gender, knowledge, and practice in the formation and use of African dark earths in Liberia and Sierra Leone
- “Indigenous African soil enrichment as climate-smart sustainable agriculture alternative”
- Anthropogenic Dark Earths in the Landscapes of Upper Guinea, West Africa: Intentional or Inevitable?
- Ifá Ẹsẹ and other Wisdom Literature
- Ruined settlements and new gardens: gender and soil-ripening among Kuranko farmers in the forest-savanna transition zone
- Yam to Corn Meal
- Podcast Episodes
- Articles
- Ifá Ẹsẹ and other Wisdom Literature
- A comparison in product-value potential in four treatment strategies for food waste and faeces – assessing composting, fly larvae composting and anaerobic digestion
- Biofuel Produced from Solid-State Anaerobic Digestion of Dairy Cattle Manure in Coordination with Black Soldier Fly Larvae Decomposition
- Anaerobic digestion of black solider fly larvae (BSFL) biomass as part of an integrated biorefinery
- Biogas generation from insects breeding post production wastes
- Videos
- How to attract the Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia) to start your colony.
- How to Use BSF Biowaste Treatment – Step by Step
- Composting with Black Soldier Flies. The outcome I wasn’t expecting!
- Black Soldier Flies (BSF) larvae eating two fish
- Black Soldier Fly Larvae for fish food
- Feeding aquarium fish with Black Soldier fly grubs