Nelly Bassily | August 19, 2013
Raising goats, including the dairy goats mentioned in this week’s story from Kenya, can help farmers feed and nourish their family and purchase the necessities of life. But goats can turn into pests – they will eat almost anything, including growing crops.
Our script of the week presents one Malawian farmer’s innovative solution to this problem. In Malawi, farmers are nervous that free-ranging goats and sheep will browse on winter crops the minute the crops emerge. Instead of camping out in the field to protect his crop (as many farmers do), one farmer keeps hungry animals away by thoroughly soaking animal dung in water, then sprinkling the water on his crops.
The animals sniff the crop, then move somewhere else to forage. Local farmers have followed his lead. As a result, he and his fellow farmers can attend to their farming tasks without guarding their winter crops!