Page 37 - Local Voices, Local Choices Excerpt

The cycles of old and new 35
Roots & Shoots students at the Sokoine School near Kigoma, Tanzania. JGI, 2016. A key approach to Roots & Shoots classes is hands-on participation, which makes each lesson physically real and relevant. This helps students understand the connectedness of humans, animals, and the environment, increasing their impact when they take action.
to make the same land compatible, and the best way to do it is through conservation agriculture as a method. Some call it smart agriculture and others called it agroforestry. What we say as a general term is conservation agriculture.”
One of the techniques used in conservation agriculture is contour farming. “Farming on the valley’s steep slopes was an issue, but creating terracing for the agricultural fields helps erosion and creates a more pro- ductive yield with less effort. In contour farming, the use of grasses to limit or to minimize erosion is one of the key aspects. The people in the villages, they loved that. We used a pilot plot for an example so the people could see it in action as a solution, but of course, it took a long time, and the project ran out of funding.”
Another limitation, according to Japhet, was that he and his staff never had enough time to teach people about conservation agriculture. To