Problem: Farmers (primarily women and children) collect tree branches for animal fodder and firewood, leading to deforestation. Some of these trees are the food source for animals in remote, mountainous areas including the amphi tree which bears fruit that feeds local monkeys in Nepal; once these trees are gone, the monkeys eat maize in farmers’ fields.
Our Solutions:
•To propagate nearby trees, we are teaching farmers how to graft trees for fuelwood as well as amphi trees to feed nearby monkeys. During grafting, the decapitated rootstock of a tree is fused with tape to a shoot branch. The main advantage of grafting is that a large root system (which stays alive for years even after a tree has been harvested) may be re-used to accelerate the growth of a sapling branch rather than the intact sapling having to establish a large root system over many years.
•We are using the SAK picture book of best practices to scale up these concepts which are easily translated to hillside farmers in Africa and Haiti.