Into a new millenium

Thank you all for your comments and good wishes on my 1000th blip and getting us into the spotlight for a while!!
With our new focus on Conservation Agriculture, I am forced to read a little!!.
I really have no interest in Maize, it's a poor crop introduced by colonists, and not much of a fit for the African climate.
When I read the results of our surveys, as we head to spread the green manure Gospel and more, to a wider audience (they call it mainstreaming!!), I realise that with millions being spent, expert reports, subsidies and more experts, the people I care for were relying on one meal a day for 4 months every year.
Other issues besides the unaffordable cost of fertilizer and the scarcity of labour, not to mention the cost of hybrid seeds.
It really hit home that we, the tiniest NGO in the world, should do something for the people we know, and so our guys on the farm go to Zambia, where one of our partner NGO's is doing wonderful work on Conservation Agriculture, so we are on it.
The plan is a minimum till, saving on labour, green manure to seroiously reduce fertilizer, and the use of local African seed. We will naturally look at optimum usage of fertilizer in Year 1, and some lime to make it more effective as most land is acidic after years of artificial fertilizer.
Of course this will not be easy, we will be thought of as mad, the experts will quote yields and science, but we know that subsistence farmers need this type of help.
Was I ranting on the first blip of the new millenium?

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