Video: GREENING THE DESERT PROJECT - How the Sahara Desert is Turning into a Farmland Oasis

In the African Sahel a country called Niger bordering the Sahara Desert, the largest desert in the world, is stopping desertification and turning the deserts into an Oasis.

Regenerative Agriculture is leading the way with a technique called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration or FMNR FMNR was pioneered in the 1980s by Tony Rinaudo and Australian Agronomist who is widely known as the forest maker. The innovative technique has been adopted by local farmers through peer to peer learning making it cost effective and easy to implement. Over the last 40 years the visual results and the data have shown FMNR has been extremely successful in turning desert into farmland. It has regenerated 5 million hectors of degraded land, 200 million trees have been restored and has benefited 2.5 million people increasing house hold income by 18-24% the available arable land has doubled since the severe droughts of the 1970s and tree density has 10x since its all time low in the 1980s.

This is an extraordinary achievement considering Niger only receives on average 6.5 inches of rainfall a year and 80% of the country is considered a desert. The country has been effected by severe droughts and suffered huge land loss over the last decades and as a consequence Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world. However Niger has been turning this around, by turning its deserts into a farmland oasis through the technique of FMNR which you will learn more about in this video.