In working in Tamilnadu, India I discovered a tree I want to share. It is the Moringa tree. It is a pioneer tree, nitrogen fixing. It has amazing medicinal values. It is used in Africa to cure aids. It has a vegetable which is a pod which is highly nutritious, like a bean pod, .18 inches long Moringa leaves can be turned into a powder for a super food.
Even better is what it does for the soil and the water table. See this web site
http://www.treesforlife.org/our-work/our-initiatives/moringa/moringa-resources
for stories of how they have transformed people’s lives and soils by providing a livelihood with moringa trees. It is semi tropical so grows only in southern Arizona, Florida, California and Texas in the U.S. Certainly much of these areas are desert, as well as many other areas of the world (90% of the surface of the earth is undergoing desertification).
We are using moringa and 7 other trees, open pollinated seeds, medicinal herbs and earthworks, for a restorative agroforestry project. Our farmers are primarily subsistence farmers and to save their livelihoods and ultimate their lives by being able to farm where they could no longer farm because of decreasing water tables. A major strong point of our program is that it returns sovereignty to the farmers themselves as well as gets the water table replenished without huge outside monies required.
See our web site for more about our program of restorative agroforestry. www.handsonpermaculture.org
