Lessons from Africa for Americans!

Aldo Leopold's, The Land Ethic, absolutely enthralled me. Spending my summer in Africa, I was exposed to a new way of living- in every way possible. Coming back into America and subsequently being thrown in Colloquium three days later has intensified how much I see the need for a change in the way I chose to live- the way we chose to live in America.

Teaching farmers a sustainable way to clear land. Zambia

While much of the reading we had with The Land Ethic caught my attention, the section on The Land Pyramid made me think back to my time in Africa. In this section, Leopold talks about how the biotic pyramid is misunderstood within the context of conservation education.

Biotic Pyramid

This biotic pyramid is complex web of lines and levels, mixing and turning but yet it some how manages to maintain and support the Earth. One thing depends on another and another and another. When one part of the biotic pyramid goes missing, the whole chain is thrown off and the chain struggles. It can either attempt to adapt or it will fail all together. So what does this all mean? And how in the world does this connect to Africa?

Well, when you see the Earth, the cycles, the processes in terms of the biotic pyramid it means that life has to start somewhere. That somewhere is the soil we stand on, the ground we walk over daily. Soil is not simply soil- it is the start of the food chain, the foundation of the energy chain. During my time in both Malawi and Zambia we were given the opportunity to teach a program called Farming God's Way. It is a conservation farming method taught to all to help improve crop yields. (Most farmers us the slash-and-burn technique which ruins the land and significantly decreases the crop yield.) I specialized in teaching the management portion of the program and in this section, I was able to teach the simple concepts of the biotic pyramid- how everything in life God has created to rely on one another.

Farming God's Way training in Nsaru, Malawi 

You see, being an American and now reading Leopold's essay puts me into the hypocrite category- big time. I preached about how we should use every part of the land in a sustainable way. I said we in America do that. We use the land to in an honorable and land sustaining way, but we don't. Both as African's and American's we use the land in a way that takes away from it, ways that disrupt the biotic pyramid. I am deeply convicted about my misrepresentation of how I saw the use of resources in America.

So how is it that we use the Earth in a sustainable, God honoring manner? And, even more is the question of how many American's think that our conservation methods are good? If we are a product of our environment have created a correct environment about sustainability?