"Roy. Just Roy." <delduck3 DeleteThis @yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1165845675.337118.111750@80g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
>
> pearl wrote:
> > Animal Aid, for example, will be seeking support for a scheme
> > to plant 2,000 trees in Kenya's Rift Valley province. They will
> > bear oranges, avocados, mango, pawpaw, kei apple and
> > macadamia nuts.
>
> ... which the people will be lucky to see any of.
>
> Arbor-based crops in Africa are a risky venture for even the most
> stable of Kenya's regions. The high rates of HIV infection on the
> continent (now approaching 50% in the Central African area, according
> to WHO), along with the cultural and legal biases against women
> inheriting their husbands' land, are negating long term investments
> such as fruit trees. In all likelihood, your glorious fruity trees will
> be cut down for firewood LONG before they bear their first orange.
>
> Animals, on the other hand, can be handled communally and moved along
> with refugees, so that if any particular farmer dies of disease (HIV or
> otherwise), or the region destabilizes, the village food supply can
> continue. Such projects with poultry have met with success both on
> continent (in Senegal) and off continent (in Panama).
>
> Furthermore, poultry and milking animals are needed to supply an almost
> instaneous supply of protein to the populace. What are the people going
> to do while they are waiting for the 3 years it takes for an orange
> tree to sprout its first fruit? Animals also serve as efficient
> scavengers of garbage dumps and manure piles - a chicken can gain
> almost 40% of its diet from coprophagy - like rats and rabbits, it has
> evolved the means of digesting microbial protein from its own feces to
> supplement its diet, and an instinct to do so.
>
> Veganism is a luxury to be enjoyed by the rich and ONLY the rich. We
> should not try and impose such cultures upon the Africans - if
> anything, the beating the US took in Somalia should have taught us
> that.
>
> /Roy
'In 1991, Dr. Sanchez accepted a position as the head of ICRAF
in Nairobi, Kenya. There, he quickly discovered that African
agricultural production lagged due to the extremely depleted nature
of the soil. Dr. Sanchez' most enduring contribution to ending
world hunger has been his development of the means to replenish
crucial nutrients in exhausted soils, through the development and
promotion of agroforestry. This practice of planting trees on farms,
when combined with adding locally available rock phosphate to
the soil, has provided farmers in Africa with a way to fertilize
their soils inexpensively and naturally, without relying on costly
chemical fertilizers.
The 150,000 small scale farmers who are utilizing Dr. Sanchez'
methods are experiencing greatly increased yields, in some cases
200% to 400% above previous plantings. In response to this
success, ICRAF plans to help African farmers plant 5.5 billion
more trees over the next decade, the equivalent of another
tropical rainforest. ICRAF's goal is to move 20 million people
out of poverty and remove more that 100 million tons of CO2
from the air with this project.'
http://www.worldfoodprize.org/2002Laureate/pressrelease.htm
'..Africa. Half of the world's livestock-dependent people live here,
along with 15% of both the world's sheep and cattle and nearly 1/3
of all goats -- animals renowned for their ability to eat almost any
plant (some kinds of goats can even climb trees to reach browse).
Africa's 183 million cattle, 197 million sheep, and 163 million goats
are supported almost entirely by grazing and browsing. Most of the
huge continent is used by livestock. Non-livestock Africa consists
mostly of desolate portions of the Sahara, Namib, and Kalahari
Deserts; what remains of the dense, central African tropical rainforest;
the tsetse fly portions; scattered farming areas; and the few (partially)
protected wildlife preserves. The image of Africa as a gigantic,
unfenced wildlife landscape is wholly false. In fact, much more land
is dedicated to livestock, and by far most wildlife is gone.
....
Aside from the tsetse areas, ranching and nomadic herding are
common south of Africa's central rainforest, large areas of which
have been cleared for livestock. Recent studies show mounting range
deterioration throughout southern Africa. In the Kalahari region, cattle
and range developments have ruined much of the grassland and
semigrassland, leading to the deaths of millions of antelope and other
wild animals. In the late 1970s in the Kalahari, drought-stricken
migrating wildebeests piled up against new cattle fences; 200,000 out
of 230,000 migrants died of thirst because they couldn't reach water.
Ranching and herding have also ravaged the land of, plundered the
livelihood of, and made virtual slaves of thousands of Bushmen -- the
tribespeople who had gathered and hunted here for more than 10,000
years. Many now live in shanties and tend cattle for their stockmen
bosses.
A 1984 United Nations report states, "The degradation of rangelands
caused by overgrazing is doubtless the most serious environmental
problem facing Botswana." The nation's cattle outnumber people 2
to 1, and are a traditional measure of wealth. Much of the land is
stripped bare, and during droughts starving goats climb atop cars to
reach withered leaves and onto roofs to eat thatch. Having killed the
tsetse with herbicides, ranchers are invading Botswana's last
remaining wetlands. Thousands of miles of fences built to exclude
wildebeests, zebra, antelope, water buffalo, elephants, and other
wild animals thought to carry livestock diseases kill tens of
thousands of these wild animals yearly; for example, more than
50,000 wildebeests died in 1983 alone. Like many others, the
Botswanan government is dedicated to serving big-time ranchers,
and many high government officials are themselves cattle barons.
Sheep ranching is intensive in South Africa and northwest in
neighboring Namibia, though not elsewhere in southern Africa.
Forty million of the fleecy beasts overgraze millions of acres of
the scraggly brush and surviving grass there. In southeast Africa
the populous Zulu tribe has evolved to regard cattle as indicative
of wealth and status - to the great harm of the environment.
...
Back on the mainland, moving north through eastern Africa, we
find that large portions of the south have relatively few livestock,
thanks to the tsetse fly and other deterrents. From central Tanzania
northward through Ethiopia, however, cattle, sheep, and goat
damage is moderate to severe. Portions of the coastal lowlands are
overgrazed, and some of the dominant nomadic herders here kill
anyone venturing onto their grazing territories. The 100,000 square-mile
Afar Triangle, just west of where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden,
contains some of the lowest, hottest, driest, and most desolate land
on Earth; yet, even here herders allow their goats, sheep, and camels
to take what scant vegetation and fresh water still exists.
In the livestock-ravaged highlands, human starvation is periodic, as
recently demonstrated once again in Ethiopia. Livestock plague the
region's arable lands and make them more susceptible to drought
and other natural vagaries in climate, frequently even eating crops.
Bare dirt is spreading as stock raisers topple trees for fodder and
livestock eat saplings and groundcover. The Masai, one of the
region's large, nomadic herding tribes, has over the centuries
become so over-specialized and dependent upon livestock that
they sometimes allow their animals every last available leaf and
drop of water in an area rather than risk losing their source of milk,
blood (they drink it), and meat. Masai populations have tripled
over the past 30 years; their livestock numbers have also soared
and grazing pressure mounts.
The Ethiopian highlands were once among the most biologically
diverse non-tropical forestlands on Earth; now they are among
the most damaged. The rate of deforestation here is one of the
highest anywhere, and only 3% of Ethiopia's original forest
remains. Herders currently are driving livestock into the few
remaining rugged areas not yet overgrazed. Recent reports from
Ethiopia's northern mountains tell of the forest understory in
previously ungrazed areas being stripped of every edible leaf and
twig.
In northern Kenya, Lake Turkana (formerly Lake Rudolf), one of
Africa's largest lakes, has shrunk dramatically in recent years.
Many people think overgrazing of the vast Turkana Basin is the
main cause. In southern Kenya, deforestation of mid-altitude
brushland and upland forest to improve livestock pasture is
occurring "at an alarming rate," according to the UN.
Not far south, in northern Tanzania, lies Africa's largest caldera,
a 12-mile diameter, steep-walled crater named Ngorongoro.
Mostly livestock-free since 1974, and protected from
encroaching ranching, farming, and poaching, the grass-, shrub-,
and tree-filled Ngorongoro is now one of the planet's greatest
game preserves.
The vast belt of steppe and grassland from the Ethiopian highlands
3500 miles west to the Atlantic, from the Sahara 1000 miles south
to the rainforest -- sometimes termed the Sahel -- is also a land of
cattle, sheep, goats, and famine. Here, periodically, many thousands
die from starvation; the emaciated people often are pictured lying in
the dust beside their skeletal cattle -- the cattle that symbolize their
wealth and prestige! As throughout much of the world, social
inequities are largely to blame for the famines; however, contemporary
livestock production is a major cause of these inequities, as well as an
inefficient and destructive food production system. The Worldwatch
Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank, states
that "virtually all the rangeland [in this region] is "at least moderately
degraded." According to ecologist Paul Ehrfich, "In the Sahel, the
territory just south of the Sahara, and in Africa in general, cattle are
playing a major role in this desertification" (Ehrlich 1986). The Sahel
livestock population quadrupled between World War 11 and 1968,
and remains many times higher than the land can accommodate.
Livestock grazing throughout the vast bulk of this region has turned
thousands of square miles into wasteland, and continues to do so at
an ever-accelerating rate. For example Mauritania recorded only 43
sandstorms between 1960 Q 1970, but 10 times this number in the
following decade, with a record 240 sandstorms in 1983 alone.
Officials here and throughout drier Africa report a main cause of
devegetation and land degradation is herders breaking branches from
the already small tree population to feed livestock, and cutting woody
vegetation to build livestock enclosures. In The Sudan, about 30% of
which has been seriously desertified during the past 50 years,
thousands of square miles of forest are burned annually to increase
livestock forage. And Lake Chad, the largest natural lake in northern
Africa and one of the largest closed river basins in the world, has
shrunk to merely 20% of its size only a few decades ago, mostly due
to livestock-caused desertification and livestock production practices.
According to various sources, the Sahara Desert (or rather, desert-like
condition) is expanding southward at a fluctuating, rough average of
2-6 miles per year, with livestock production the principal cause.
"There were those who even claimed that the huge Sahara Desert was
a man-made product caused by shepherds burning the jungle, and by
the subsequent overgrazing of ever larger herds of goats and sheep.
Moderm research has proved this to be so.
--Thor Heyerdahl, Fatu-Hiva
"Recent research has demonstrated that the Sahara was covered with
trees as recently as 6, 000 B.C., and that it was turned into a desert
by nomadic tribes that burned the trees to provide grazing areas for
their herds.
--Jacques Cousteau, The Ocean World
Only 6000 years ago the Sahara Desert was largely covered with trees,
brush, and grass, and has since become arid. Much evidence also
indicates that, as is the case in many of the world's drylands, livestock
grazing was a significant contributor to this aridification. Contemporary
livestock herding over more than 2/3 of the USA-sized, sandy, barren
wasteland we now call the Sahara Desert continues to deplete what
scant soil, vegetation, and water sources remain. Stock raising is
carried on wherever possible with little regard for sustained yield or
environmental consequences. However, livestock ownership here is
less a matter of survival than tradition, honor, and glory.
The region all along the northern coast of Africa and south for many
miles into the interiors of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco was 2000
years ago extensively utilized to provide livestock and crops to the
Roman Empire. Much of it was covered with forests. Today, the
climate has not changed much, but the area is largely desolate. WC.
Lowdermilk writes:
Over a large part of the ancient granary of Rome we found the soil
washed off to bedrock and the hills seriously gullied as a result of
overgrazing... With the coming of the grazing culture, brought in by
invading nomads from Arabie; erosion was unleashed by overgrazing
of the hills. We can see here on the landscape how the soil mantle
was washed off the upper slopes to bedrock Accelerated run off
from the bared rock cut gullies into the upper edge of the soil mantle,
working it downhill as if a great rug were being pulled off the hills.
In this manner has the country been seriously damaged, and the
capacity to support a population much reduced. (Lowdermilk 1975)
Today, the region is still tremendously overgrazed by millions of
cattle and tens of millions of sheep and goats. The United Nations
reports that "Rangelands have been overgrazed with three head of
cattle where only one could thrive .... Two-thirds of the land area
of Tunisia is being eaten away by desertification." The Sahara is
expanding north as well as south.
Far to the east, in Egypt's richly fertile, intensely overpopulated
Nile River Delta, much potential cropland is used instead for the
less efficient production of 5 million cattle.
Overall, Africa rivals any continent in the extent of livestock
production damage. Overgrazing, forest clearing, and other
livestock production activities are major factors in the decline of
most African endangered wildlife, including the gorilla. Between
1850 and 1980 Africa lost 60% of its forest cover, perhaps mostly
to promote livestock. African stock raisers have killed millions of
large herbivores as competitors, and because they think that
wildlife spreads livestock diseases. Historically, disease epidemics
introduced by cattle have repeatedly decimated Africa's wildlife,
causing severe ecological disruptions. Livestock protection rivals,
and in many areas exceeds, sport hunting and poaching as the main
cause of predator mortality, with similarly profound environmental
consequences. Stock raisers encouraging new growth burn many
millions of acres unnaturally each year. Overgrazing has caused
gigantic dust storms and accelerated hydraulic erosion, displacing
much of the soil over vast areas. Africa's infamous locust invasions,
caused mostly by overgrazing, worsen the devastation. (..) Livestock
production has displaced many native tribal cultures, and is, along
with human overpopulation and unjust food distribution, the major
anthropogenic cause of relentless famine in Africa. The continent's
cattle, sheep, and goat population doubled between 1950 and 1987,
and continues to increase at a high overall rate, despite sporadic and
massive livestock die-offs.
...'
http://www.wasteofthewest.com/Chapter6.html >> Stay informed about: Andrew Tyler: Don't follow the herd and give a cow for Chr.. 
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