We are delighted to introduce you to Senegals force of nature Lucie Diatta. Our admiration for Lucie as a mother, farmer, activist and chair of the women’s group in her village Santhie Berra. Santhie Berra is located in the municipality of Toubacouta in the west of the country.
Keywords: desertification, feminism, community building, agroecology
Get to know Lucie in this video and read more about her work below!
Even though she does not call herself that, Lucie is a real feminist. Together with thirty women she grows vegetables in their community garden, which provides an extra income and creates financial independence from the male partners. Besides the activities in the garden, Lucie helps the women with writing and reading.
Salt in the soil
In Santhie Berra, climate change is clearly noticed by the sharp rise in temperatures, but also because of high percentage of salt in the soil that affects agricultural crops. Lucie is also experiencing this damage in the community garden. The salt comes from the seawater that started penetrating more and more inland due to the rising sea level.
With the help of agroecological techniques and support of Solidagro through the women’s federation of Toubacouta, Lucie is making the community garden more resilient against climate change. By planting a variety of different crops Lucie and the other women of the village create resilient and fertile soils. The diversity in crops stimulates pollination and the fertile soils store more carbon extracted from the atmosphere than the dry, acidified or depleted soils we often see in the agroindustry.
The right to food threatened
According to Patrick Verkooijen of the Global Center on Adaptation, by 2030 between 12 and 43 million citizens (depending on the measures taken) in Sub-Saharan Africa will be living in poverty because of global warming. A direct consequence is that the right to food - the central mission of Solidagro - will no longer be guaranteed.
