In fact, Niger's agriculture has not always been so bad, in the late seventies of the last century, Africa because of wars and natural disasters and other reasons, so that many countries have reduced grain production, which in the eighties of the twentieth century, shocked Africa and other African drought climate disasters, resulting in many countries in West Africa grain harvest was cut in half. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

This periodic drought was later shown to be related to the El Niño phenomenon, and Africa experienced a drought almost every ten years, so in response to this extreme drought conditions, the Nigerien government began to encourage people to grow crops that can be grown on dry lands to reduce their dependence on paddy fields.

In the beginning, this policy was not very well received by everyone, because the yield of paddy fields was higher, and if people were not sick in the head, no one would give up paddy fields, and dryland was not taken seriously at all.

But there are unforeseen circumstances!

In 1984, Niger experienced the largest and worst drought on record, with hundreds of thousands of hectares of land in the north of the country swallowed up by desert, and annual precipitation in Niger fell by 70% compared to normal years, with crop yields falling by 60% due to drought and water shortages, and more than 70% of poultry and livestock dying due to drought and water shortages.

In the 80s of the twentieth century, except for developed countries such as Europe and the United States, all other places were cultivated by manpower and livestock, and Niger, a small African country, was naturally the same, so the drought of this year hit them very hard, because their livestock were very badly damaged.

Farming requires livestock, large livestock such as cattle, are very difficult to feed, a qualified cattle needs at least two years to grow, during which it needs to be carefully cared for, and always pay attention to the health and epidemic prevention situation, after all, Niger is also a country with mad cow disease outbreaks. So 70% of livestock deaths affect them a lot!

It is also because of this year's drought that the foundation of the whole country has been shaken, and agriculture is the foundation of a country founded on agriculture!

And the peasants' land is gone, and their livestock are gone, which is basically equivalent to losing the means of livelihood.

Therefore, the state has launched a policy to encourage the cultivation of dryland crops in a timely manner, and will also provide financial support, and even send people to help (to mention, before the civil strife in Niger, when the country had just become independent, the old foundation left by the French was actually not bad, but then it slowly collapsed, coupled with civil strife and armed conflict, as well as the rapid growth of the population like a balloon, Niger's economy is getting worse and worse, and this century is even going backwards, and finally it has become one of the most backward countries in the world).

Since 1984, the Nigerien government has been praying for help from the world, mobilizing people to help themselves, organizing people to dig canals and wells in areas where water sources exist, and making full use of groundwater and surface water for irrigation.

In this process, the Niger government, which was quite good at that time, provided almost 350 million CFA francs in financial support, and then used the high-quality seeds provided by the Americans to plant dryland plants in most of the places that were not suitable for growing rice, and the government in order to encourage production, but also greatly reduced taxes, agricultural taxes dropped to 10%, farmers only need to pay 1/10 of the annual harvest of grain to the government, and they can get the best quality seeds from the government for free (free Oh dear!)

Not only that, the government will also organize the surplus labor force to reclaim the wasteland that has the conditions for planting, and the harvest after reclamation will all belong to individuals, and the government will also provide food, seeds, agricultural tools and even funds free of charge to help them develop.

After this series of policy stimuli, the enthusiasm of the common people is very high, everywhere is reclaimed wasteland, everywhere is dry land, everywhere is full of grain.

As a result, the food shortage in Niger has been greatly alleviated, as the agricultural grain production of Niger has increased by more than 100,000 tons due to the expansion of the area under cultivation in the drylands, which is equivalent to enough food for millions of people, and they have become a net exporter of food among the arid countries of West Africa.

However, there is a saying called happiness and sorrow!

Although the dry land has been reclaimed more, although the grain yield and harvest have increased, it has brought another problem, that is, serious soil erosion.

In the last century, Niger faced far less desertification than it is now, the rainy season was still very long, the surface water and groundwater were very abundant, and the country's population was small, in 1965 Niger was only 3.65 million people, so the demand for food was not large, and there was a lot of wasteland in various places.

The so-called wasteland is actually a lot of plants, herbaceous plants, small shrubs, succulents, large trees and shrubs, and so on.

Plants can grow in these places, and crops can of course also grow, so they were later reclaimed into dry land, but after these dry lands were reclaimed, these plants were all destroyed, and the crops planted on them could not replace the original plants at all, and every rainy season, the bare surface will be washed away by rain, and the soil is lost very quickly, and as the El Niño phenomenon is getting more and more serious, the drought situation in Africa continues to worsen, and the speed of expansion of the Sahara Desert to the south increases rapidly, so the northern part of Niger gradually becomes sandy, the wasteland eventually turned into a desert.

More than 20 years have passed, and today's Niger is completely different from the Niger in the 80s, not to mention the quadruple of the population, but the area of cultivated land has declined, and the area of arable land in the whole country has also declined......

Agadez, the former second-largest province, slowly declined, and the population of Niamey moved southward, and in 30 years, the population of the capital Niamey increased by more than 800,000, the highest rate among any city in West Africa, which shows how quickly the situation in the country has deteriorated.

The ensuing civil strife has destroyed Niger's efficient government, so policy support at the national level has also been lost, so it is surprising that there are still patches of dry land in this place.

"Fellow, why don't you plant sweet potatoes here?"

Sweet potatoes are the friends of the poor! I don't know who said this! But Lin Quan thinks he has a point.

Sweet potato plant belongs to the family of spindles, the growth range is wide, the living conditions are not strict, it can grow in many areas of the tropics and subtropics, the growth cycle is generally about four months to five months, basically similar to rice, but the yield is very high, at least higher than rice.

Among the rhizomes and leaves of sweet potatoes, the roots are the fruits and are the main food, and the leaves and the small stem under the leaves are actually edible.

Sweet potatoes are disease and drought resistant, the nutritional value is also good, and the yield is also very high, the key is that the management is basically stocking, so he doesn't know why he doesn't grow sweet potatoes here, because the only influencing factor is the lack of water, but this is next to the Karui River, and there is no shortage of water!