Cameroonian farmer, Richard Ndeudjui, has transformed his life through agroforestry.

Soucient tells the story of Ndeudjui from Mekenene in central Cameroon, whose small farm has become a model of agroforestry and is now “producing more value per unit of land than even the most productive cereal fields of the American Midwest”.

Thanks to an encounter with the World Agroforestry Centre back in 2003, he has managed to transform his previously unproductive and disease prone cocoa, plantain and cassava farm into a flourishing plot that now boasts new experimental cocoa grafts, neat rows of marcots ready for sale, and the vigorous seedlings o safou, moringa, njansang, bitter kola, cocoa, plantain and half a dozen other species.

“Unlike their traditional colleagues, the people from the World Agroforestry Centre‘s Yaoundé branch did not want him to clear his land. They did not come bearing gifts of fertilizer or pesticides, and did not advise him to create a cooperative to, say, buy a tractor,” says the article. The scientists worked with him to determine the crops he wanted to grow and address the problems he had.

Through what is known as farmer-managed domestication, Ndeudjui learnt basic techniques such as growing cuttings in frames, grafting, marcotting, and rearing seedlings. The Centre provided support to him and other farmers so that they could combine various trees and crops on their land. This approach is now being rolled out in more than a dozen other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America:

Read the full story: The Cameroonian Revolution