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Why are farmers making gardens that look like crop circles? (non-ET alternatives)

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Why are farmers in Senegal creating gardens that look like crop circles?
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/to...en-senegal

EXCERPTS: From the air, the new garden in the town of Boki Diawe, in northeast Senegal, looks like an eye [...] If all goes according to plan, this garden will soon look similarly lush. The circular garden—known locally as a tolou keur—has recently been planted with papayas, cashews, lemons, and more. One of the inner curving rows is dedicated to medicinal plants, while the outer row has been lined with baobabs and Khaya senegalensis, whose wood is also known as African mahogany.

[...] Desertification is the process through which lusher land degrades into a desert. [...] The drivers of desertification include climate variability and climate change, overgrazing, the construction of river dams, and conflicts that displace people and spur shifts in land use. Long droughts can leave fertile soil vulnerable, and winds and rains can whisk it away. “Deforestation can accelerate the process, because trees serve as windbreaks,” Okolie says. That’s where the Great Green Wall concept came in.

The initial plan emphasized trees as an anchor for soil and a buffer against the encroaching sand. Some elements of the idea made sense, says Geert Sterk, a geoscientist at Utrecht University who studies land degradation. “Tree and shrub roots hold soil, [and] the canopies trap raindrops before reaching the soil surface and reduce strong winds,” curbing erosion by wind and the region’s relatively rare but fierce rain, Sterk explained in an email.

But the ambitious plan hasn’t really panned out. There were political squabbles about where the green line should be drawn, and scientific debates about what fuels desertification, as well as the efficacy of the approach. As of 2021, the project is just a fraction of the way towards its goal of planting hundreds of millions of acres.

A new infusion of money, pledged earlier this year by various governments and development banks, will give the project a boost—and now, the focus is shifting to more local gardens. Over the past seven months, more than 20 versions of these circular gardens have sprouted across Senegal... (MORE -details)
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