Soil, water protection helps Eritrea farmers

By Ed Harris

ASMARA, Eritrea (Reuters) – Redaegzy Gebremedhin, 64, an
experienced farmer and entrepreneur in the Red Sea state of
Eritrea, remembers fondly the days when he exported fruit and
vegetables to Europe and meat to Saudi Arabia.

But that was more than 30 years ago.

Today, more than two-thirds of Eritrea’s population depend
on food aid and officials wait to see whether donations by the
United States and Britain will stop a million people from going
hungry this year.

President Bush has pledged $674 million to ease famine in
Ethiopia, Eritrea and other countries, while British Prime
Minister Tony Blair has promised $300 million.

Eritrea’s poor food situation is worsened by loss of labor
to the military, closed borders with neighbors Ethiopia and
Sudan and persistent drought, experts say.

Eritrea has always had a semi-arid climate, says
Gebremedhin, clutching his plastic-coated diagrams and stroking
his beard. But water was once much easier to find.

“When my mother was a young girl, I am sure she was not
pulling water from a well, she was scooping water from a
spring,” he says.

Gebremedhin insists Eritrean farming would improve if
rain-water were used more efficiently, adding that he started a
project more than two years ago to prove it.

SELF-HELP

Protecting the soil and slowing the flow of rain-water
keeps the soil moist, helping vegetation to grow, he says,
standing at the top of a dry and stony valley less than 12
miles from the capital Asmara.

Conservation of water and soil is best done with manmade
obstacles, or ideally by vegetation, he says.

Deforestation and destruction of vegetation have been
problems in Eritrea.

Agriculture, population pressures, poverty, use of wood for
cooking, and destruction of cover for Eritrean guerrillas
during the 30-year independence struggle have taken a toll.

While 30 percent of the country was covered in forest a
century ago, that figure fell to 5 percent in 1960, and less
than 1 percent in 1995, official sources say.

Looking into the valley, while buses grind their gears up
the nearby road, a splash of green stands out in the valley
below.

Welcome to Manguda Mountain Farm, says Gebremedhin 15
minutes later, now sitting under an acacia and pouring a cup of
tea somewhere in the splash of green. After three years of
work, the results are beginning to show.

“Every year, we see greater cover, grass cover,” he says,
delighting in the young trees that have germinated by
themselves and the monkeys who come to visit.

PROTECTING SOIL

With help from the nearby village of Shiketi, and
government-organized students, Gebremedhin has built a variety
of stone obstacles — terraces, dams, and micro-basins — in
the valley, protecting the soil and slowing rain-water when it
comes.

“The combination of land, water, labor, the market and
technology are all vital factors (for increased production of
food),” he says.

The proper conservation of soil and water certainly helps.

Using his stick to scratch the earth above a micro-basin, a
semi-circular group of stones that stop the soil and rain-water
from rushing away, Gebremedhin makes his point effectively.

“It’s still wet,” he says comparing it to the dry earth
outside the stones.

This moisture provides conditions for vegetation to grow.

Elsewhere in Eritrea, drought has made growth of grass more
difficult, and farmers have been forced to sell their animals.

“Shiketi doesn’t suffer that, because they have this
resource,” says Gebremedhin proudly, saying Shiketi residents
can cut the grass from the project and take it back to their
animals.

The villagers can also take the dead wood for cooking, and
Gebremedhin has since had to employ extra guards at night to
protect the other trees.

And, he says, spooning out white honey to go with the tea,
“while we are sitting here, water is seeping down into (the
village) wells and onto the plains below.”

The honey, of course, comes from Gebremedhin’s bees.