posted 5 years ago
Welcome to Permies, Connie. Thank you for joining the community.
Wow. What an amazing opportunity and project!
Your clan grow yams which are a vining ground cover crop which I think takes well to burying lightly and regrowing upwards, which has massive potential for soil building in a tropical climate. Not sure, if your variety can take being buried, but that is a cool function of some of those varieties. This would mean planting more than you need for food, and using them to help build organic living soil depth.
I encourage you to explore the world of biochar on our forums. It is very simple to produce by individuals or families and is a very stable soil amendment of carbon which will help you build soil organic matter fast in the tropics.
The taro is a wetland plant, and the bananas are a small tree like plant. So you have some good variety for quickly establishing food forests. I would encourage papayas, breadfruit, and any other tropical tree fruit and nut that you can find in your country. I don't know what your family's traditional diet would be, or what it is, entirely, now... Seems to be starch heavy. ...anyway I would recommend finding out what beans grown well where you live, and a variety of corn, and some types of squashes, as well as getting some greens growing.
Are there any other nations, clans, or tribal groups in your area that still practice the traditional ways? I would search out that, and visit if at all possible, and explain what you want to do to bring your people back to a better culture closer to the land. I think that most other groups would appreciate the project. Bring notes and hopefully workable bits of plants to propogate.
I wish you success in getting this project moving.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."-Margaret Mead "The only thing worse than being blind, is having sight but no vision."-Helen Keller