2nd August, 2005

DAVID ADAMS

Aborigines have been supplementing their diet with the seeds of the acacia tree in central and north-western Australia for generations. Now there are hopes that the same tree will prove a gift from God in the west African nation of Niger, one of the poorest nations on earth, and currently in the grip of a devastating famine.

In a country where three in every 10,000 children are now dying each day from malnutrition and as many as 3.6 million people are facing food shortages, the planting of acacia trees is one of longer term solutions being implemented to help prevent future famines.

THE TRAGIC FACE OF FAMINE: Eighteen-year-old mother, Ai Dagash, and her one-year-old son, Ousseini. Ai and her husband, Ismael, are Peulhar herders who earn their livelihood from their animals. But locusts and drought destroyed most of the Niger's pastureland and the couple are struggling to feed their children. Ousseini severely malnourished. His twin brother, Hassan, died this week of malnutrition. PICTURE: Courtesy of World Vision. Described as the second poorest country in the world, Niger’s terrain predominantly consists of desert plains and sand dunes. More than 80 per cent of the population rely on subsistence farming and cattle rearing while it’s estimated that only 15 per cent of the land is suitable for arable farming. A severe drought and locust plague has left more than 2.6 million people facing food shortages. UNICEF estimates that as many as 32,000 children are already suffering from severe under-nutrition and a further 160,000 children are suffering from moderate under-nutrition. The United Nations World Food Programme has announced it aims to provide emergency food rations to 2.5 million people in Niger over the coming months, more than doubling it’s previous plans. To donate: CARE Australia 1800 020 046 or www.careaustralia.org.au Caritas Australia 1800 024 413 or www.caritas.org.au Oxfam 1800 034 034 or www.oxfam.org.au Red Cross 1800 811 700 or www.redcross.org.au Save the Children Australia 1800 760 011 or www.savethechildren.org.au UNICEF Australia 1300 884 233 or www.unicef.org.au World Vision 133 240 or www.worldvision.com.au

Tony Rinaudo is a former Australian missionary who worked for Christian organisation Serving in Mission based in in the Maradi region of Niger for 17 years before returning to Melbourne in 1999 where he now works for World Vision.

Involved in introducing acacia trees as a new food crop in Niger in the 1980s, the 48-year-old says that while the commonly-grown staple grain crop of millet is quickly affected by a lack of rain or insect plagues, “with a tree crop, you’ve got the roots down deeper, and they’re much more resilient”.

Not only do acacia trees come into seed in the height of the dry season but Rinaudo says that being a desert plant, they thrive in the hot dry climate of Niger.

“It’s a good match. We never tried to replace the millet but we encouraged people to diversify and the acacia’s are one extra option we could give them...” he says.

The acacia trees are drought-resistant and are harvested early on in the year meaning they will not be subject to the devastating attacks from locusts between June and October.

The seeds of the plant - which contain 40 per cent carbohydrate, 25 per cent protein and five or six per cent fat - are usually ground up and the seed coat separated. Once in flour form, it can be mixed in a ratio of one part to three with millet flour to make traditional porridge or fura, a heavy grain drink.

Rinaudo says the adoption of the acacia seeds as a supplemental food source has been painstakingly slow with many farmers misunderstanding their purpose and pulling them up when they realised they weren't a cash crop. Despite that, he estimates there are as many as 150,000 acacia trees in the nation today. World Vision plans to plant 60,000 more this year alone.

As well as providing an alternate food source, the trees also act as a windbreak (Rinaudo says winds can reach up to 70 kph at planting time and knows of some farmers who have had to replant eight times in a single year because of high winds) and supply farmers with a renewable source of firewood and compost.

Rinaudo first came across the use of acacia trees as an alternative food source after facing his first famine in Niger in 1984 - only one of five he and his family (three of his four children were born in Niger) experienced during their time in the west African republic.

“I was really discouraged by that famine,” he recalls. “Because I realised - OK, it happened in ‘84 but it could have been any year and it could have been for any number of reasons. So I was really praying and searching for other solutions.”

Returning for a break to Australia, he attended a CSIRO workshop held in Gympie on the uses of the acacia trees. There he heard a colleague of the "Bush Tucker man", Les Hiddins, talk about the nutritional value of the trees.

“My ears pricked up because I’d seen them - the Government had planted them in Niger already - but I didn’t know you could eat the seeds. They were planting them as a windbreak.”

A year or so later, a CSIRO scientist visited Niger and reinforced that the seeds were edible.

“Things just ran from there,” says Rinaudo.

Planting trees in Niger has been something of a passion for Rinaudo. Shortly after his arrival in the country, he began work on a small agricultural project which included a forestry component involving planting trees on farmland. But it seemed an uphill battle - every year local farmers would chop down trees on their properties in the mistaken belief that a "clean farm is a good farm". Not only that, but Rinaudo couldn't get his newly planted trees to take root in such harsh conditions.

“We were planting about 4,000 trees a year and most of them died. I remember being in a field one day and saying to the Lord: ‘You didn’t have to bring me out here to make a fool of me, you could have done that back at home. Please open my eyes, show me what to do because what we are doing isn’t working and there’s no-one else to learn from - they’re all doing the same, conventional things’.”

Rinaudo says he believed God answered his prayer.

“Many of the trees that were chopped down were actually still alive and the stumps resprout... and what appeared to us as just desert shrubs, they were actually trees but every year the people recleared that land (for farming) and it looked like a desert again...” he says.

“But when we realised that, everything changed. We started working with about 12 farmers at that time and getting them not to slash all that regrowth but to trim it back and leave about 40 stems per stump.”

The method has since spread across the country and while it was estimated that there were about 500,000 trees in the country when the famine struck in 1984, it’s believed that there are now more than 80 million trees in the nation.

Rinaudo says he couldn’t believe his eyes when he visited in February this year.

“Areas that had been like parking lots when I went through, they had wood stands there. There are so many trees, people are making money from the sale of firewood.”

For Rinaudo, the current famine brings back memories of some of the hardest times he’s ever faced. When he last visited the country in February things were already heating up.

“It was fairly obvious, even in February, that things were going to be very serious for the people,” he says.

While the situation in Niger is already desperate, the situation is expected to worsen even further as the effect of a second failed harvest - which was expected in September but has been blighted by drought - kicks in. It’s also being exacerbated by food shortages in the neighbouring nations of Mali and Mauritania and there are fears now that these countries could soon face severe famine.

“I think it’s important to note that they’re living on the edge all the time,” says Rinaudo. “Their farms are producing very little and in any year, they don’t grow enough to feed them through to the next year so it just takes a bigger event like what happened to push them over the edge.”

Which is where long-term solutions - such as the planting of acacia trees - are vital.

“While there is always the human need to help people suffering, I wouldn’t have as much heart if I didn’t think I was contributing to the longer-term solution...” says Rinaudo.

“(Change) is possible. The actions that are being taken by groups like World Vision - building cereal banks, getting communities mobilised to take positive action, domesticating wild foods that have been largely ignored in the past and work with the acacias - (mean) the situation is not hopeless.”