Community Forest Sowing
Across rural Guinea, deforestation has hollowed out land that families used to depend on. The trees that remain hold seeds that nobody collects, and the cleared land sits waiting. Meanwhile, the same families lose their margin to feed themselves and stay where they are, and West Africa's strongest economic-migration routes run right through here.
The arboRise project, run with the local NGO Guidre, turns the whole supply chain inside out. Families are paid to harvest seeds from their own trees, forty different species so the new forest stays biologically diverse. The seeds get coated in clay and charcoal, a permaculture trick that protects them from rodents and insects, then the community itself chooses which deserted plots to sow. No outside contractor decides what gets planted where. The people who know the land restore the land.
Not For Sale supports Community Forest Sowing because dignity matters in how aid arrives. Paying families for the work they already know how to do, and letting them lead the restoration, builds the kind of resilient rural economy that gives people a reason and the means to stay. That is the same project, in a different form, that runs through everything we do.
Field updates
Posts from the planting team14 Dec 2023
By: Hugo Bitouzé, Tree-Nation Head of Reforestation ProjectsIn Guinea, we have been working with local farmers through agroforestry practices to creat...
21 Jun 2022
This activity is done in groups: The first group in the frontline each make a small hole in front of them with the hoe, then the people in the second group place a seedball in each hole, and so on to the other end of the field. In this way a density of 5000 biodiverse seedballs per hectare is achieved, of which about 60% will germinate during the rainy season. Spot seeding helps to eliminate weeds around the saplings and facilitates root penetration into the soil. It also prevents the pellet from rolling off stony and slopy fields when a heavy rainfall falls. Direct seeding makes it easy for the whole population to participate and fosters collective energy.
14 Jun 2022
Involving those who live next to the trees is essential to raise sustainable forests. At ArboRise we fight to maximise the share of the pie that the local communities get from reforestation projects. And it is not only money. We provide knowledge and build capacity. For example we explain how to produce seedballs, which protect the seeds from rodents and birds: https://lnkd.in/eJ6tg2pT But it is not only a one-way knowhow-transfer: we too learn from the population and discover new uses of the 40 tree species that we have selected. At the end it is a partnership: ArboRise provides the initial kick and the local community provides the goal.
8 Apr 2022
Our team gathers all seeds which have been harvested by the "seeds-families" on the village place before starting the production of seedballs
18 Mar 2022
With our partner ETH’s ForDev we invented such a game and tested it in the field in the small village of Diaradouni and in Manakoro. The arboRise game is very simple: the four players receive cards representing their fields, with different grades of fertility. They can then play their cards (cultivate their fields) in several zones, representing the types of crops: food crops (cassava, fonio, etc.), cashew nut plantations for cash, or agroforests with arboRise. Each type of crop involves specific costs and income, as in real life. And as in real life, one can choose to “bet” everything on a single crop or diversify the cultures, which is better !
25 Feb 2022
The women growers bring their harvest of (diversified) seeds to the village: Then it is the stage of calibration, counting and quality control, under the eyes of the children. Then, of course, comes the payment, recorded in public. And all these operations are repeated in the first 9 villages of our 2021-2022 campaign.
25 Feb 2022
And the 90 “seed families” have started to harvest the tree seeds, after assessing the health and maturity of their seed tree.
18 Feb 2022
The women, who collect the tree seeds, will be able to harvest more easily with the tarpaulins under the seed trees, and in the rainy season the farmers will be able to clear the weeds around the seedlings without getting their feet wet in the mud. arboRise provides support to local communities who want to reforest in a sustainable way.
19 Jan 2022
So many families are interested in taking part in the reforestation project by arboRise that an innocent hand is involved to chose those who will harvest the seeds or provide their land. Happy to contribute with an additional income for these families !
7 Jan 2022
As the first field mission of our partnership with the Research Group for Forestry Development of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich...
7 Jan 2022
Both the national (“this is your home, welcome to your house” according to the new deputy director of Water and Forests) and the local authorities (“you are going to plant 400 hectares this year, and why not 500 in subsequent years?” according to the sub-prefect of Linko) strongly support our action. As for the population directly concerned, they gave us an enthusiastic welcome in the village of Forono. They all thank our association, its members and our donors for contributing to the recovery of the forest cover with our participatory approach.
26 Nov 2021
The young shoots from our spring reforestation campaign are already looking good ! It only took the six months of the rainy season for them to take firm root in the soil. Unlike nursery-raised plants, they do not suffer from the shock of transplanting and their root system is stronger. Fortunately, their survival in the dry season depends on the depth of their roots. These young shoots must now escape from the goats who like woody plants. The second threat to the saplings is bushfire. This is why we encourage landowning families to plant hedgerows (barriers against goats) and build firebreaks around the land. The low-tech approach of arboRise is based on Mother Nature. It is slow and full of uncertainties but it's sustainable
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