Ukinaawo ("environment" in Jola)

Millions of farmers in the semi-arid tropics of Africa are poor: their income from farming is not enough for them to live comfortably.  Now, even the modest harvests they have are threatened by ever-rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, and depleted soils.  Most of the world’s population growth over the next 100 years is going to be in Africa, and urbanization is causing rapid loss of farmland.  Without changes in farming practices, the danger of famine is acute.  

The Gambia, where our pilot is starting, about three quarters of population still depends on farming and livestock to live.  Most Gambian farmers have only a few hectares of land.  They grow crops both for cash and for consumption, but their livelihoods are threatened as never before.  
Soils in the semi-arid tropics are depleted, causing low yields, for several reasons.  Lack of trees and ground cover leaves the soil vulnerable to erosion by wind and water, which removes organic matter that is key to the soil’s fertility.  Brief periods of intense rain wash soil’s organic content deep into the earth, below the level of cultivation, where crops cannot benefit from it.   

Although most smallholder farmers do not use tractors, even manual tilling of fields for agriculture depletes soil by breaking down its structure and reducing crop residues, which in turn diminishes organic matter in the soil and the beneficial micro-organisms that need this matter to live.  The small particles that result from tilling are more easily washed away.  This reduces the soil’s ability to hold water, and the small particles are eroded by water or wind.  

Many crops grown deplete the soil and farmers don’t have sufficient land to practice crop rotation.  

Low incomes contribute to worsening farming conditions: when an international market emerged for tropical timber, in recent decades many of the largest trees were illegally cut down and shipped out of the country for short-term, private gain.  The loss of these huge, ancient trees, which were scattered throughout farmlands, causes higher winds, since the trees no longer form windbreaks; higher temperatures due to lack of shade; and soil erosion with fewer roots to slow the flow of water.  

On their modest cultivation, smallholder farmers suffer a high degree of losses due to climate change:  severe heat waves wilt crops in the field; unseasonal rains post-harvest cause crops to spoil, due to lack of good storage for produce and lack of agro-processing facilities.  

The interlinked problems faced by small farmers in the semi-arid African tropics—poor soil, tree cover loss, climate change effects, lack of access to markets—are common to many countries, and urgently need attention.  Climate activists and even agronomists tend to focus on the humid tropics, where ample rain makes it easier and faster to experiment with new crops, and the carbon sequestered in rainforests is valued.  The semi-arid tropics have problems equally or more serious, but small farmers in these regions have little political clout: they are essential but almost invisible, as most of the world is looking elsewhere.

Ukinaawo—‘environment’, in the west African language Jola—works with farming in the context of the whole environment. Nature is a complex but well-functioning system, and successful farmers work with and within that system.  While tropical smallholders in semi-arid regions face a cascade of problems--and they are keenly aware of this, and looking for solutions--the solutions themselves are closely linked and best undertaken in concert.

Ukinaawo works with communities of farmers to integrate traditional farming knowledge with new expertise in regenerative farming, and to engage in continuous collective learning about what practices enrich the soil, increasing yields and incomes. We aim to support farmers to leapfrog over conventional (monocropped, mechanized, chemical input reliant, and carbon intensive) farming.  We bring a suite of ‘technologies’, some related to growing crops and others documenting the results: geo-location, data collection and analysis, yield tracking, and soil carbon content measurement. 

Farmers bring traditional knowledge of farming in their region, including crops, weather pattrns, and pests.  They bring their experience, land, labor--and cell phones, which have myriad uses to be leveraged.  

Many small farming communities have cooperative social structures that have functioned for generations as social safety nets and knowledge sharing platforms.  These social structures can themselves be considered a traditional technology, one that can be adapted to spread and support knowledge sharing of new practices within and beyond those Ukinaawo formally works with. 

In each local area--beginning in The Gambia, and extending to the Kavango region of Namibia by the end of 2024--Ukinaawo works with small cohorts of farmers to learn and test diverse, complementary farming technologies that mirror and leverage nature.  We respond to the specificities of each locality to increase yields even in the challenging conditions of the changing climate  by, for example, making biochar and using it as a soil additive, to restore soil organic content; replanting farm landscapes with native trees, to lower wind speeds, temperatures, and soil loss; intercropping annual and tree crops to manage pests without unaffordable chemicals; and planting native grasses to trap water flowing on the surface of land and help it percolate into the soil.  

One technology we believe holds great potential is planting of resilient native crops that may have been neglected in recent decades in favor of cash crops.  For example, findi (in Mandinka; fonio in Wolof) a grass native to West Africa, is highly drought tolerant, pest resistant, and fast growing, requiring virtually no intervention between sowing and harvest.  It is also highly nutritious.  However, it fell out of favor due to the difficulty of husking.  Perhaps the provision of a simple husking machine to a group of villages could be the technology that returns fields to cultivation of this heritage crop. 

Ukinaawo's principle is to take continuous feedback from nature and the local context, including farmers' needs and capacities.  Our activities and technologies evolve to local context in each place, with farmers and their families, their yields, incomes, and food security, as not simple objectives but as a system that is itself a solution. 

Ukinaawo’s target population is smallholder farmers in the semi-arid tropics of Africa.  This is a population of millions of farming families.  We approach them as a constellation of villages, because success in farming depends on local conditions.  Many of the thousands of small settlements where smallholders live are not served by electricity or water utilities, health services, or good schools.  Our target population is hardworking and knowledgeable in farming, but poor.  It is composed of both men and women, although sometimes they specialize in different crops.

These farmers have been farming for generations.  Villagers tell that a century ago, the landscape supported far more grasses and trees and the soil was rich.  Shifting agriculture was practiced, such that a field had time to recover after a soil-depleting crops such as tubers.  As the population grew and desertification spread, the amount of land for each farmer diminished such that shifting cultivation was no longer so feasible. 

Over the same time period, farmers were encouraged to abandon heritage crops such as coco yam and butternut in favor of cash crops.  In West Africa, the staple food of many countries changed from traditional grains and tubers to imported rice. Many farmers have lost knowledge of heritage plants that are better adapted to the climate.  Famers who could afford it have tried chemical inputs, and some since abandoned these due to rising costs and diminishing benefits. 

Farmers changed practices in the belief that their incomes would rise,  but that didn’t happen, not permanently.  For generations, farming communities sustained themselves.  Now, climate changes are so rapid and extreme that traditional means of adaptation may not be enough to prevent widespread hunger.  

Cultivating cash crops is frustrating; farmers are not getting the profits they hope for.  Although food prices are high, individual farmers don’t have large harvests to sell.  They also don’t have good storage facilities and therefore must sell quickly to realize any gain from their crops.  Most smallholders depend on intermediaries to get their produce to market, and these middlemen take most of the profit.

Most smallholders have no livelihood options beyond farming and no formal education in farming (and sometimes no formal education at all.)  Neither do they have time or opportunities actively learn about new agricultural practices.  They lack the capital to invest in farm implements or soil inputs, and the support they receive from government is inadequate. In the Gambia for example, government formerly provides expertise and inputs to farmers, but these programs have been phased out.  In particular, agricultural extension programs have been focused on vegetable farming, not staple crops, and their scale has been reduced. 

Farmers realize that their yields are dropping and have traditional means of adapting, but only some understand the mechanics of soil depletion, and climate effects are reaching levels never seen.  In the absence of time, education, and government extension services, farmers are keen to learn new ideas on how to enrich their soil and adapt their farming to a hotter, less predictable climate.  

The managing director of Ukinaawo, Bubacarr F. Colley, is a farmer from the Gambian village of Ndemban Jola.  His family has farmed the land around his village for several generations.  His parents were passionate farmers who grew enough local rice to feed the family throughout the entire year.  His mother farmed staple grains during the rainy season and vegetables during the dry season--innovative because in that time women usually did not farm.  Other women copied her in growing vegetables, and women’s vegetable gardens have now become a widespread institution across the country. 

Buba’s family has special distinction in their community: they are known and respected for their generosity, humility, and curiosity.  These values are expressed in community social relationships: listening to and supporting others, and finding joint solutions to common problems.  

Buba himself did not attend primary school because his family needed him to work on the farm, but he managed to learn to read English through sheer determination and found a sponsor to attend middle and secondary school.  His lifelong intention was always to work in agriculture. Buba’s older brother now farms the family land in Ndemban. Although Buba no longer lives in Ndemban, he has never stopped being a member of the community and has never stopped farming.

Before starting Ukinaawo, Buba visited many villages and listened to farmers speak about the falling yields and changing challenges of farming. Fundamental to the solution is experimentation, feedback and learning.    

Julia Harrington Reddy first came to the Gambia over thirty years ago to work in human rights law and has travelled extensively all over the Africa.  Her career and worldview were shaped by the hospitality and generosity that she encountered--as well as painful experiences countries where social solidary broke down completely into war and genocide.  

Human rights work taught Julia that ‘expertise’ can only be applied effectively when the ostensible beneficiaries are full and equal participants in whatever effort is undertaken.  Julia has always been a keen environmentalist.  She and Buba worked together on an initiative to provide tiny solar systems for village households, and she visited Ndemban Jola many times. When Julia returned to the US, she continued to work with Buba as he oversaw construction of her climate-sensitive house.

As a team, Buba and Julia have wide and varied skills, grounded in an attitude of humility and open-mindedness.  Essential to their work with Ukinaawo is the practice of respectful interaction with a wide variety of people, in different languages, and learning from whatever experiences life brings.  The spirit of community embodied by Buba’s parents is a key feature Okinaawo.  We can bridge knowledge gaps by sharing new ideas in climate resilient agroecology to smallholders farmers, and bring the traditional knowledge of heritage foods and local farming traditions to the rest of the world.  

Ukinaawo has identified a suite of farming changes and intervention that increase yields and and farm incomes.  Outreach has been done to many Gambian villages and 30 women who farm in the Kavango region of Namibia, establishing that there is demand for the type of partnership that we offer.  We have surveyed the farmers on the different interventions that they would like to try, including planting native trees, creating sand bunds, intercropping, and cultivating heritage crops--all of which, if they improve yields, would sustainably make their farming more climate resilient.

Our first activity was a workshop to demonstrate to 35 farmers how to make biochar, held on 17-18 April in The Gambia.  (Biochar can be made for agricultural waste that would otherwise be burned or left to rot; when pyrolyzed (burned in the absence of oxygen) it is a valuable enrichment to soil, providing a habitat for millions of microbes that facilitate the growth of crops.) This pilot cohort comes from seven villages with a combined population of at least 2,000. 

As a condition of participation in the workshop, the farmers committed to making biochar and using it in a marked section of the land that they will plant and farm during rainy season (which starts in June), and to train their neighbors in making biochar if they are interested. 

We have surveyed the farmers on the different interventions that they would like to try, including planting native trees, creating sand bunds, intercropping, and cultivating heritage crops--all of which, if they improve yields, would sustainably make their agriculture more climate resistant.  

Results from this growing season will influence the next iteration of interventions (what practices to extend, what to experiment with, what to change) and refine our understanding what's needed to shift agricultural practices more widely and quickly.   

We are applying to Solve for mentoring and advice in scaling and evolving Uknaawo, the startup not-for-profit, into a bridge for farmers into the carbon markets and, ideally, a for-profit business.  We believe that smallholder farmers can provide a tremenous service to the entire planet by sequestering carbon in the vast areas of bleached, depleted (and thus low-carbon content) soil in the semi-arid tropics of Africa.  Given that these farmers can furnish a service that the world desperately needs--nature-based direct air capture and carbon sequestration--it seems that someone should be willing to pay for it.  

However, we have left carbon capture and selling of credits out of our solution because we want to start now, and global carbon markets are too unstable and undeveloped, and carbon soil content measurement too costly, for us to see a clear path to profitability in the near term.  

Also, as we noted above, farmers are poor and deserve services.  Increasing soil's carbon (organic matter) content is the most direct way to improve yields and raise farmers' income. Thus, we chose the eonomic prosperity challenge rather than the climate challenge.  There is farmer demand for the services we provide, but the our target group cannot pay us.  They need all the additional income they can glean for health care, education for their kids, etc.  

Thus, we are launching as a nonprofit, focused on increasing yields and farm incomes in the short-term, and experimentation, collecting and analyzing data and coming up with new interventions in the medium term.  This is vital work, and we are itching to do it. 

But the more successful we are in scaling farming methods that sequester carbon, and as soil carbon measurement techniques are refined and their price falls, and as carbon markets grow and prices stabilize, the more a path to much greater scale may emerge.  If funding for free climate services for farmers can be raised from investors or buyers of carbon credits, we could begin to take advantage of the true potential of Africa's vast, semi-arid and sparely populated landscape to mitigate or reverse climate change.

Two virtually full-time, but are not paid salaries. We make some money from farming.  Several others are working in or in support of the solution team, but are all volunteers.   

We've been discussing it for over a year, and working virtually full time for almost a year.