Ethiopia

We finished stone bunds on the steeper plots before the rains this year. The visible test is simple: after heavy rain, is the water leaving the plot brown?

This year it ran clearer than last year on the treated plots. I am recording that as an observation, not a soil-loss figure — we have no measurement to support a number.

Status: Progressing. The farmers who did the work are the ones who noticed the difference first, which matters more than any report I could write.

Worth noting for anyone planning support here: when we asked the cooperative what they needed most, storage came before improved seed.

Their reasoning was that they already lose part of what they grow, so growing more without somewhere to keep it does not help them. Hard to argue with.

Passing it along because it did not match what we assumed going in.