Perivoli Rangeland Institute
The mission of the Perivoli Rangeland Institute is the restoration of arid, desertified land across Sub-Saharan Africa into healthy land for its more productive use by local people: and, in the process, the sequestration of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
THE PROBLEM
Much of the farmland in Sub-Saharan Africa has been damaged over long periods by over-grazing by cattle and, in the case of smallholder plots, by excessive use of fossil fuel derived fertilisers and pesticides, excessive tilling, cutting down of trees and mono crops.
OUR SOLUTION
In the case of larger farms, we show farmers how to selectively harvest invasive bushes and using mobile kilns convert the cut bush into biochar for feeding back into and nourishing the soil in the hope of seeing a return of perennial grasses.
In the case of smallholder farmers, we encourage the use of more friendly agro-ecological practices.
CARBON CREDITS
Our goal is to help the farmers, both those with larger farms as well as the smallholders, obtain carbon offset credits.
To do so we have introduced the usage of a tool pioneered by Downforce Technologies Ltd for the remote measurement of soil organic carbon, moisture retention and biodiversity.
IMPLEMENTATION
We aim to use the Perivoli Trainers, as well as the nursery school teachers addressed by the Perivoli Schools Trust, our sister initiative, to assist with the implementation of these strategies including the training of local people and the collection of data on the pace of implementation and the resulting impact.
As such, our goal is to create a network of “citizen scientists” out of the nursery school teachers.
PROSPERITY
We expect to see as result of these initiatives an improvement in agricultural yields, an inflow of monies from carbon credits and a resulting increase in prosperity.
We measure the extent of Prosperity uplift through our in-house designed Perivoli Prosperity Index.
MANAGEMENT
The activities of the Perivoli Rangeland Institute are overseen by Evert Strydom who runs the Perivoli Rangeland Institute from an office in Windhoek.
He can be reached at evert@rangeland.africa.
