Your mission, should you choose to accept it help create an azolla-based whole systems movement, a collaborative call to collaborative action. A call not only to sons and daughters of Sanda Magbolontor, Saloneans and diasporans but also a call to our brothers and sisters across the world.
If you're looking for a regenerative whole and virtuous circle then look no further than Azolla, mother natures tiny miracle, a plant that needs little to thrive, doubles in mass every few days and can store more planet-warming co2 than a forest! A plant who's myriad benefits mirror the worlds' myriad challenges and a miraculous plant you can hold in the palm of your hand which can help deliver the world's sustainable development goals.
Just imagine regenerative food and energy systems, delivering clean water and improved health outcomes, a whole systems plant for a whole system problem and a plant which tackles the worlds' most pressing issues in its most needed places. A plant that can feed livestock and perhaps people, that has it's own insecticide and can make a rich fertilizer that improves soil health and yield; a plant that can provide clean water in every village obviating the need for single use plastic water sachets; a plant that can even deliver a truly green, clean bio-fuel that doesn't displace either crops or trees and a plant that can help make malaria and cholera diseases of the past.
So, if you'd be so kind, please join us as we pay homage to the Azolla Foundation and all who are delievering proven projects around the world - let's spread the word of their good works.
Let us first our honour our Japanese father and shout about the rice-azolla-duck-fish-vegetable system Dr Takao Furun pioneered and now adopted by 75,000 farmers in Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Iran, Cuba and in 2020 Sierra Leone.
And let's shout out loud for our Filipino kuya and ate for their foresight researcing rice back in the 1960's and now holding the largest collection of azolla in the world at the International Rice Research Institute and for using Azolla as a green manure and livestock supplement back in 1982.
But let's shout from the roof tops for our Indian, Bangladeshi and Korean cousins for showing us how Azolla can reduce the world's rice paddy CO2 and methane emissions.
Let's make some noise for our Bolivian hermano and hermana showing Azolla's ability to mitigate and reverse eroisan and their superior Azolla Bocashi replacing chemical fertilizers, improving soil health and boosting yield, while reducing farmers weeding time by mulching with Azolla.
And some more noise still for our Ecuadorian ñaño and ñaña, where an era of bio-production is replacing the use of chemical fertilizers and Azolla is already becoming the main source of Ecuador’s nitrogen fertilizer.
Let us roll out the red carpet for our Indian didi and bhaiyya for their Bhoochetana ‘Land Rejuvenation’ inititaive ustilizing Azolla to empower women since 2008, 3 million farm families experienceing yield gains of 35-66% and an overall increase in agricultural production of almost six percent.
And let us celebrate our venerated and venerable Chinese and Vietnamese families who were first to spot Azolla's potential 1,500 years ago and are first to see it's potential for food production, water purifcation, power and oxygen-generation in space!
Let us raise also raise a cheer or three for Doctor Bujak and the team who discovered the “Artic Azolla Event” when 50 millions years ago Azolla covered the Artic Sea removing so much CO2 from the atmosphere - a greenhouse Earth with warm temperatures at the poles - that Azolla changed the planet to the one we know today, until recently temperate and as at the time of writing with polar ice caps.
And finally, let us join to reveal Azolla's potential to change the world (for the better) and maybe even to save it (again).
FOLLOW OUR JOURNEY!
Please ❤ and share our sustainable farming journey empowering rural women to improve nutrition, food security and climate change adaptation in Sierra Leone.
