Part of the workshop over the last couple days has included meeting with a small group of farmers (about 10) and asking them to identify soil problems in their community. The post it notes below show their perception of soil problems ranked by importance. The top one you see there is burning, ie when farmers burn their fields before planting. There are a bunch of reasons why farmers do this, but the end result is they get a short term increase in crop yields, and a long term and permanent loss in soil productivity. The photo below shows a couple of fields (upper right) that have been burned. I think if you take a closer look you can see how it leaves those fields, vulnerable to erosion. There's a long list of reasons why burning fields is not a great practice in the long run. The objective of this week, as it has been in other countries, is to help farmers think about how to resolve these problems through their own observation and ingenuity rather than us as an organization swooping in with all the supposed answers. Easy to say, not so easy to do. A three day workshop  such as this is only a step in the journey. I wouldn't even say the beginning because we've been working at this a  long time. Slowly but surely we try to improve. Poco a poco.