Regenerative farming restores Niger’s denuded landscapes

ENVIRONMENT/SCIENCE

Back in the 1980s, to the untrained eye, the West African nation of Niger would have looked like one of the last places on Earth to farm. But Victorian agronomist Tony Rinaudo saw it differently. Where others might see a landscape of infertile soil, he saw potential.

Rinaudo grew up in rural Myrtleford, in Victoria’s north-east, and studied agronomy — the science of plants and soil.

He and his wife moved to Niger in the 1980s. The landscape that greeted them was dire. Generations of land clearing had left the soil barren and lifeless, and many farmers struggled to raise a crop.

But Rinaudo saw an opportunity to help restore and manage the degraded landscape using trees. Trees improve soil health and provide cover for crops from winds during germination, while providing fodder and shelter for livestock.

“I figured, if deforestation was one of the major root causes of all these problems, then surely replanting the trees would go a long way towards solving those problems,” Rinaudo says.

The solution for the degradation came, as he describes it, as an answer to prayer.

During the delivery of a ute-load of seedlings to a village, he stopped to reduce the air pressure in his vehicle’s tyres to drive through the soft sand. What appeared to be a “useless bush” caught his attention, and he saw it was not a weed but a tree, sprouting from the concealed stump of a felled tree.

“That changed everything,” he says.

Rinaudo turned his attention to finding the stumps of trees that had been cut down and regenerating their growth. He says using trees, producers could naturally restore biodiversity that had been stripped of weather protection, soil nutrients, or any life at all.

Regenerative agriculture is a farming practice where one farms with natural systems and the environment, such as increasing natural biodiversity, rotating stock through paddocks, and improving soil function.

The movement has been gaining momentum in Australia in recent years, with changing climatic conditions creating dynamic circumstances for many farmers across the nation.

“I’m not saying overrun your farm with trees,” he notes. “In [the Australian] context, we have heavy machinery, we have high labour costs, but there are ways of integrating this with conventional farming in Australia.”

Over the span of 20 years in Niger, the area of land using Rinaudo’s technique has grown by 250,000 hectares a year and now covers five million hectares, with 200 million trees regenerated. It has added $US900 million every year to Niger’s agricultural output. As well, Rinaudo’s farmer-managed regenerative farming technique has spread to more than 40 nations.

“It’s one of the poorest countries in the world, in an extremely harsh environment on the edge of the Sahara Desert, and at the time, there was no significant government or even non-government support for this work,” he says. “Farmers in Niger are growing an additional 500,000 tonnes of grain each year, enough to feed two-and-a-half million people, because their crop yields have increased.”

World Vision Australia interim chief executive Grant Bayldon says Rinaudo’s technique was groundbreaking, and had restored millions of hectares of degraded land while empowering families and communities “to build resilience, dignity and peace from the ground up”. (Rinaudo is World Vision’s principal climate advisor.)

“Tony’s work brings hope and empowers communities through practical and sustainable change,” Bayldon says.

For Rinaudo, creating a stable source of food provides stability throughout the community, and with that comes peace.

“When you degrade landscapes and there’s a shortage of food, fuel, fodder and water, there’s more competition for those scarce resources, and more likelihood that conflict will arise as you restore the environment,” he argues.

When resources were abundant, he notes, there were fewer reasons for people to fight.

Rinaudo was awarded the 2025 Luxembourg Peace Prize for Outstanding Environmental Peace for his work in giving the tool of knowledge to others around him, while feeding millions of people in the process. 

He says he was honoured to receive the prize. “It highlights the incredible work of millions of smallholder farmers, who took this risk with this crazy white guy, and restored their land. It’s a tribute to them.”

TOP Tony Rinaudo

PHOTO World Vision

MIDDLE Major erosion site in Africa

BOTTOM Tony Rinaudo shows farmers how to prune suckers to encourage new growth

It’s one of the poorest countries in the world, in an extremely harsh environment on the edge of the Sahara Desert, and at the time, there was no significant government or even non-government support for this work. Farmers in Niger are growing an additional 500,000 tonnes of grain each year, enough to feed two-and-a-half million people, because their crop yields have increased.

Tony Rinaudo

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