Page 8 - Barefoot guide

Photo © Juanfran López, www.juanfranlopez.com

SOIL MICROBE BIODIVERSITY
What you can see in the photo is what we can’t normally see with our naked eye. The photo has
been magnified many times to enable us to see some of the microbes that make soil alive. Our
health starts with growing food on living, healthy soil, full of a great number and diversity of
these microbes. These include various bacteria, fungi and many others too. They keep the plant
healthy by providing it with nutrients while the plant feeds the microbes through its roots.
Chemical poisons kill many of these microbes that are essential for plant growth.

Photo © John Wilson

SEED DIVERSITY
Being healthy means eating a diversity of foods. Growing a diversity of foods starts with
having a diversity of seed, as seen here in this picture taken at a rural seed fair in Zimbabwe.
Traditionally, in rural communities across Africa, farmers have saved their own seed. This is
seed that suits their own particular environment. This is even more important with climate
change. We have to work hard to strengthen farmer seed systems. All across Africa, farmers are
losing their local seeds, developed over generations, because they are being pushed out by
commercial hybrid seeds that have to be purchased every year.

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