A tree grows in Mali

Women farmers use special trees to improve soil, increase food production.

They call it the “fertilizer tree.” Gliricidia sepium is a special tree originally from South and Central America that flourishes in southern Mali. The tree’s leaves are particularly useful: They fertilize the soil naturally, helping farmers who might otherwise struggle to buy chemical fertilizer.

Oxfam is working with local organizations to encourage women farmers to plant the Gliricidia tree in their fields. In addition to the fertilizing quality of the leaves, the trees provide shade for fragile plants like maize, cow peas, and other vegetables.

Farmers in Mali cannot always afford to own or rent enough land to rotate their crops year to year, leaving areas fallow to regenerate nutrients. Repeated application of chemical fertilizer can make the soil quite hard, increasing run off when it rains instead of holding moisture in the land. The soil in their fields can become quite poor, reducing yields.

Oxfam is encouraging women farmers to grow Gliricidia seedlings and transplant them along their fields, where the leaves can fall and add nitrogen to the soil. We work directly with organizations in Mali supporting our Saving for Change program, which helps women to form saving groups so they can borrow small sums to start businesses and finance their farms. Women in Saving for Change groups asked for help in finding low-cost, natural ways of improving soil. The groups gather weekly to make deposits, borrow, and pay interest. Afterwards. an agriculture specialist can teach the group members agro-forestry techniques using the Gliricidia trees.

Oxfam started this special agro-forestry initiative with Saving for Change groups in 2011. Today there are 120 villages with 473 Saving for Change groups that have 11,580 members working with Gliricidia trees. These groups have planted 15,000 trees.

Near Bougouni village, members of one of the groups in the “Sabati Association” of Saving for Change groups look on as fellow members pay back their loans at a weekly meeting. “Sabati” means success in the local language, Bambara.

Photo: Jane Hahn/Oxfam America

In the commune of Zantiebougou in Mali’s Sikasso region, 1,425 women farmers from 45 Saving for Change groups and 16 villages formed the Sabati Association. They work on their own individual land, as well as on lands they farm as a group, investing money in growing beans, sorghum, and millet. They sell their produce to the World Food Programme, which has helped them with subsidies for tractors, and a building for storage. Growing Gliricida trees help the farmers improve the quality of the soil in their fields, and grow more food.

Photo: Jane Hahn/Oxfam America

Nouhoum Coulibaly, 40, with a papaya tree in his family’s garden. His mother Nagnion is a member of a Saving for Change group, and she acquired eight Gliricidia trees they planted around their garden in 2012. Nouhoum reports that since they planted the trees and the leaves have been fertilizing their garden, the fruit grows larger and they can increase the price from 300 francs (about 50 cents) to 500 francs (about 80 cents) per fruit.

Photo: Jane Hahn/Oxfam America

Gliricidia sepium trees in a field near Barama village in southern Mali. Since 2011, Oxfam has helped 473 Saving for Change groups in 120 villages in southern Mali with 11,580 members to plant 15,000 Gliricidia trees.

Photo: Jane Hahn/Oxfam America

Members of a Saving for Change group in Barama village, in southern Mali, in a field where mature Gliricidia trees are helping add nutritious nitrogen to the soil. Each woman in the group is responsible for taking care of a few of the trees. “They were proud to show their trees were growing well,” says Oxfam’s coordinator in Mali, Soumäilla Sogoba.

Photo: Jane Hahn/Oxfam America

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