Home»Muonde Trust Visit, Zimbabwe

After meeting and talking with Dr. Ken Wilson at various conferences about the topic of "agroecology" he invited me on this trip to visit the Muonde Trust project in Mazvihwa, Zimbabwe which he has worked on for about 3 decades: http://www.muonde.org. It was an great opportunity to learn about the way people live in rural Zimbabwe and how they work with the impoverished soils -- damaged by about one hundred years of dismally-poor management brought about by imperialist powers -- to feed themselves throughout drought and economic hardship.

I've arrived at my interest in agroecology through many converging thought processes. For one, soil fertility depletion, caused by fertilizer and pesticide-intensive industrial agriculture, and climate change, will likely make locally-adapted techniques and crops much more important for fulfilling people's dietary needs in the future, while heirloom varieties are being lost and forests that have fed people and sustained their traditions are being leveled for industrial crops. Another reason is that the classic model of environmental conservation through kicking people off of the land and setting it aside as a park generally always fails eventually because, either the charity that sustains the park fades, or economic meltdowns cause people to raid the the land during the slow-moving disasters, since they feel no ownership and are not invested. And, interacting intimately with nature through foraging, tending plants, observing growth, watching the seasons and connecting with the land around us are deeply satisfying and built into our genetic structure. Unfortunately, all of these things are discouraged by our current large-scale political and agricultural models.

Many interesting conversations to be had around this topic! Feel free to drop me a note. But meanwhile, click on slideshow (and hit the space bar to pause the slideshow advance so you can read my text) and enjoy my attempt at immersing you in rural, arid, beautiful Zimbabwe!