August 4, 2024 • 23 mins
Meet Tony Rinaudo, also known as ‘The Forest Maker’! As World Vision’s Principal Climate Action Advisor, Tony has revolutionized reforestation with his groundbreaking approach, Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR).
In 1981, Tony and his wife Liz arrived at the edge of the Sahara, determined to plant trees. Despite numerous challenges, Tony discovered the power of FMNR—a method that regrows trees using existing root networks rather than starting from seeds. This innovative technique has restored millions of hectares of land in Niger and is now used in 25 countries across Africa and Asia.
Tony’s journey and the incredible impact of FMNR are detailed in his book, The Forest Underground: Hope for a Planet in Crisis. This inspiring story showcases how Tony’s sustainable land management system is transforming landscapes and lives, proving that hope and renewal are possible even in the most challenging environments.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from Newstalk SEDB. Follow this
and our wide range of podcast now on iHeartRadio. Real Conversation,
Real Connection, It's Real Life with John Cowen on news
Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Gooday, Welcome to Real Life. I'm John Cowen and a
fascinating guest tonight and Osi who is helping to save
the world. His worker around the planet has earned him
an Order of Australia Award and his ideas are making
a difference in at least twenty nine countries already and
maybe will impact the whole planet. He's an agronomist and
he's widely known as the forest Maker. Welcome Tony Ronaldo.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thank you. Jonah's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's lovely to have an Aussie over the side of
the ditch. What's bringing you over here?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
So I've been invited and hosted by World Vision New
Zealand and we've had a series of meetings in Christ
Church in Auckland, Donors Churches University last night. It's been
a really action packed week but very right.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well, we'll find out a bit more about the things
that you've been sharing as you've been traveling around New
Zealand and the world, and your world changing idea came
to you as you sat next to a bush. Now
that sounds very much like Moses. The bush wasn't burning
and trying to talk to you at the time, though,
was it. So? I this was in Africa, and what
were you doing in Africa? What were you trying to achieve?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
So I was with the organization serving a mission in
Nijeripublic or Nigeri Public, West Africa, and my role in
the mission was as an agriculturist. And the backstory is,
over the previous two decades, much of the original dry
land forest had been cleared, mostly for agriculture, and there
(01:51):
are consequences for that kind of destruction in that environment,
massive deforestation, desertification, regular drought, and hunger. And my role
I was managing a small reforestation project, working with communities
to try and put at least some trees back in
that landscape.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
It's ironic that what the people were doing was probably
were trying to grow more food, and so they clear
off all the trees and the ground ends up producing
less food.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yes, very self defeating, but that's what they knew at
the time.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And so coming back to what you knew at the time.
You were trying a solution and it wasn't working. That's correct.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I was just following conventional methods. It's everything that I knew,
and it was standard practice. If you see a barren landscape,
the normal reaction is, oh, let's raise trees in a
nursery and plant them out right. In many environments, maybe
in New Zealand, where it's much more temperate, that works, yes,
But in these semiarid areas you could have an eighty
(02:49):
or ninety percent.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Failure eight right. That's not encouraging. No, no, especially for
you know, you were a professional, trained agronomus. This is
what you do. And to see only ten percent of
what you're putting in the ground surviving, that must have
been very discouraging.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
And I had the curse of youth, when you feel
like you're in incible and you can fix any problem yesterday,
and so it was very very discouraging. And not for
lack of trying. John. I did my reading, I experimented,
I consulted experts, but there's nothing sustainable or economically viable
that I came up with that would change the situation.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And it's an expensive thing to do. Isn't it reforestation
in that way too? Oh?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yes, some estimates vary between four hundred and eight thousand
dollars per hectare. So if you want scale, you're going
to need a lot of money, and you really do
need scale to have an effect.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
A lot of money, a lot of a lot of time.
You were doing this for years and it wasn't working. Okay, Well,
that sounds like a good setup for a good story.
And then you had an epiphany at a bush.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah. Yeah, So it's one of those really low days
when it really would have been quite easy to give
up and go home. Waste of money, waste of time.
Did I make a big mistake coming out here? But
I got to that point from it goes back to childhood,
and I'd said a child's prayer because I was so upset.
I was angry at the environmental destruction in my own country, Australia,
(04:17):
and what I read and saw from around the world,
plus this great injustice that we could grow in my
valley tobacco while children elsewhere were hungry. So I said
this kid's prayer, Please use me somehow somewhere to make
a difference. So that's what got me there, and I
probably would have given up, but I had this sense, no,
God doesn't make mistakes, and I shut up another very
(04:40):
heartfelt prayer, just asking for wisdom and insight on what
to do about this issue. At that point, i'd been
in the country two and a half years. I traveled
on these desert tracks are just sandy tracks to the
villagers nearly every week, eyes open, but totally blind to
(05:01):
the solution that had been at our feet the whole time.
And on this day you call them my epiphany. Really,
this bush, it would have always been there, but on
this day I really took notice of it. I took
the trouble to take a closer look. As soon as
you look at the shape of the leaf of any plant,
you've got one in the corner here.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Every space that's plastic, okay, filled me.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Nearly every species has a distinctive leaf shape, and it's
like a signature. As soon as I saw that, I
realized it's not a bush or a weed, it's a tree.
And I lent over. It's a very windy, dust blown place.
It lent over, brushed away the sand, and sure enough
there's a living stump that those shoots were coming out
(05:48):
of it.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Even though it was bush sized and bush shaped, it
was actually a tree regenerating from a big roots of
stem that was still in the ground.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Yes, And part of the reason why, apart from that
looking closely, part of the reason why I hadn't recognized
that is normal farming practice was to slash this what
they thought of as rubbish, nuisance sweet slash and burn
it every year. So I never saw these plants bigger
than half a meter or so.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Okay, but they were there in the ground, and you
and your insight was.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
This is the way to go. I don't need I'm
not fighting the Sahara desert. I don't need tens of
millions of dollars. Everything that I need is here because
there are millions of these suppressed trees across the landscape.
And the real battle line shifted from me think it's
a technical or biological solutions needed. It's shifted if people's
(06:43):
false beliefs about the value of trees on their land
brought such negative attitudes, they're weeds and destructive practices, cutting, slashing,
plowing over the top. That's where my attention had to
go into changing mindsets.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Okay, So that's actually sort of almost like two insights.
One is, there's these plants ready to go, all ready
to spring up and grow and do all the thing
that trees do, like provide shade and regeneration and all
that type of thing. And the other insight was the
problem is actually in the heads of the people that
are living here exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
So it's one thing to know what to do. It's
quite enough to know how to get people on board
with you.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Now that would have been the challenge. How did you
How did you get people to do as counterintuitive thing
of letting these things that they consider weeds grow? So
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
They actually called me the crazy white farmer, so they
didn't think much of me. Wanted to put trees on
their farm land, So I couldn't just go out there
and blast it to the world, this is what we
need to do. They would have chased me off their land.
But I got this idea. What if I just asked
for volunteers, and I worked in ten villages in those
early days, and I asked them, would you be willing
(07:57):
to come on this journey. We'll keep it as an
experiment for now in a small corner of your land,
poor and often hungry farmers are very risk averse, and
rightfully so it doesn't work, they're going to go hungry.
And these guys agreed. So we tested it on a
small corner and I said, well, just go for a year.
If you like it, we'll go another year and sea
(08:19):
where it heads. If not your land, your trees, do
what you like, hoping that they would like it. And
it was working. As soon as you select those trees
that you want, remove the excess stems because there's all
this competition. It's like releasing a coiled spring, and they
grow amazingly quickly, even in these dry regions.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Okay, so you give them a little bit of a
encouragement and they grow even better. And what do they
do for the farmers? I mean the farmers are considered
these useless space you know, taking up space and water
and whatever. What do they do for the farmer?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
If I put it in a nutshell, they make life
on earth possible. So what's the context. We have sixty
degrees celsius soil surface temperature. When the seedling germinates through that,
it's weakened. It's more susceptible to disease and insects. We
have seventy kilometer our winds that are sand blasts, so
they're braiding and desiccating, but more often outright bearing your crop.
(09:20):
And people have to plant and replant and replant as
many as six times, as many as six times, and
so they didn't have a magic pot of sea.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
This was their food supply.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
And the rainy season doesn't extend itself just because you're
laid in planting. It still stops at the same time.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
So if they're replanting and they don't get the rain, yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
They don't get their rain and they don't get the yields.
So it creates those microconditions and improves the fertility of
the soil plus all these other benefits wild foods, traditional medicines,
and I could go on.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Well, okay, so this worked. It worked with these ten farmers,
was it that you're working with. Yes, and we'll talk
a little bit more about how successful it is will
wide now, but its spread didn't.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
It Eventually there's a few hiccups along the way because
people don't like to change what they're doing very easily.
But in time it's spread across that country at the
rate of a quarter of a million hectes per year,
and after twenty years there were two hundred million trees
without planting a single one.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
That's amazing, two hundred million trees and that was just
in one country, and then it's spread across another eight
countries in Africa. And then how many countries in the
world are using your technique now?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So World Vision alone has introduced it into twenty nine
countries at different stages. Some have very well advanced, others
perhaps just starting. But it's in at least twenty nine countries.
And the thing to keep in mind, yes, I did
champion and develop this method, but it's actually based on
traditional knowledge and it's also intuitive. So I regularly come
(11:02):
across people in total isolation. They simply figured it.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Out right, Yeah, if you just My guess is Tony
Ronaldo in Australian who's done amazing work around the world
helping to regreen places that have become bleak and desert
like through changing people's mindsets about what works on their
types of soil. An amazing guy. I'll talk more about
how he got to be what he is and how
do we get to do what he's doing. This is
(11:27):
real life on news Talk.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
ZEDB Intelligent interviews with interesting people it's real life on
Newstalk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Welcome back to real life. I'm John Cown talking with
agronomist Tony Ronaldo about his work that he's been doing
in Africa and that music is from Niger, a place
where he spent many, many years. It's a song called
IGAs Milan by leafid Iligardad. Probably not many people know that,
but Tony, it's great to have you in New Zealand.
(11:58):
You grew up in a pretty idyllic place in northern Victoria.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yes, Mertleford, northeast Victoria and a lot of bushland around
Mountain Stream. Good place to up, lovely place. I was
very blessed to be in that area.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And even though it's beautiful and temperate and wonderful, you
became distressed at what you saw people doing to the place.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Well, there was a lot of bulldozing of the native bushland.
And even as a boy, I certainly hadn't studied ecology,
but there's something that didn't add up about leaving steep
Hills bear for years on end and disappearance of wildlife
and erosion gullies for me. So yeah, that made me cross.
Not that I'm against progress, but it seemed so destructive
(12:39):
and unnecessary to treat the environment in that way. I
thought there must be a better way.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
So what you saw happening to the environment around you
that powerfully influenced you. Another thing, which I know was
a big influence was your mother's faith.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Yes, yeah, so all this anger is good and well,
but if you stay there, you just stew and probably
become very bitter. And I was frustrated that I didn't
have a voice to change the adult world. But the
one thing that I did have, Mum, had a big
influence on me, and I felt, well, I do have
power to at least pray and just just ask God
(13:15):
please use me somehow somewhere to make a difference in
this broken world.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
So you seem to have this philly natural observation what
was happening in the world about ecologically, and you couple
that with your faith, and that gave you sort of
an impetus on a track that you're still on. And
you trained first of all as an agronomist, yes, in
armadel and New South Wales, right, and then you came
(13:40):
over here into the bit of theological training and Henderson Henderson,
and then of all the places you know you could
have gone back to beautiful northern Victoria to do it
and tried to influence there. Why did you end up
in Niger Republic.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Well, I joined this organization serving in mission and much
of their work that they work around the world, but
much of their work is in Africa. And right from
childhood I had this love and fascination for all things African,
so it was sort of inevitable. And then on the
form you fill out this this application form and what
are your interests? To this day, I don't know where
(14:16):
it came from, but I wrote dry land agriculture. Yes,
why dry land and not humid or whatever. But that
set the die and I couldn't when I realized, oh no,
I'd have to learn French and very harsh environment and
the things I'd learned about this very very difficult country.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
So your love of greedy and nature and everything like
this has led you to this bleak desert land and
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I couldn't wriggle out of it, try as I would.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
But the best possible place to go Africa. When you
arrived there drought, poverty, hardship and all the things that
flow on from that illness and problems. How does that
bleak situation in Africa fit in with your understanding of
what God wants to do? That must be very challenging
(15:07):
at times.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Well, my understanding of scripture is that God is a
god of love. This was never his intention, and it
breaks his heart to see that suffering as much as
anybody else's. And so it's a wonderful motivation. How can
we repair this situation and help people to live dignified,
(15:30):
healthy and happy lives.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
So it must have been very satisfying in the end
to see that these situations can be repaired. They're not
just sort of You don't just sort of shrug and
walk away saying there's no hope for them.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It's a story of It's a story of hope because
in the most unlikely place, on the edge of the
Sahara Desert, in one of the poorest countries in the world,
under extremely difficult conditions, and yet this story is a
very positive story of transformation. So I'm very blessed to
have had that life experience. And today as I travel
(16:05):
around the world, so many people are anxious and hopeless
about the future. I can say if under those conditions
those people can affect such a positive change.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
What's our excuse? Yeah, that's great. Now, you said before
that it was years though before you sleep had started
to see the results, before you actually even got on
a track that actually produced those good results. Mission work
is a bit of a mystery to a lot of people.
And if I could ask a blunt question, what's in
it for you? Why would you do something like that?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Well, there was that child's anger and desire to make
things better, both in the environment and to address severe poverty.
And so in many ways, I was doing what I
was passionate about doing.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
So it was a passion led thing, passion lad.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
It was a way of being showing gratefulness to God
all the good things that God has done for us.
This is how it can show my gratitude and to
serve God as I serve people. So yeah, it was
never easy. There are lots of hard times and even
impossible times, but always there was this underlying sense that
I was in the right place.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Now, whatever things I've picked up from you, and I've
been reading a bit about you, and it's not something
that I pick up from a lot of Christians. It's
a sense of stewardship. You know, there is this idea
that some Christians have of let's just get what God's
given us and use it and use it up. But
you have a sense of stewardship, if that be right?
(17:36):
And what is that?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Yeah? I feel there's a major lack of understanding of
the full the range of scriptures that talk about God's creation.
For a start, it doesn't actually belong to us, It
belongs to God and he must have been the original environmentalist.
When you think of the beauty and the intricacy of
God's creation in Genesis, it actually talks about yes, yes,
(18:03):
till the land, but take care of it, and we
seem to manage that. How can we make benefit out
of this and forget a little bit about looking after it?
Speaker 2 (18:12):
So you come from an evangelical tradition, and evangelicals perhaps
even less noted for being concerned in this area. But
do you think things are changing in that area.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
I'm seeing a real awakening Christians becoming much more aware
of their responsibility to care for God's creation.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
And that's why you find yourself working within an organization
which has a Christian heart. What is it that you're
who are you working with and what what's your role
within them?
Speaker 3 (18:41):
So I've just turned twenty five with World Vision Australia.
Twenty five years with World Vision, Yes, I don't know
where all those years went. And my current role is
Principal Climate Action Advisor. Fancy name for what I do.
Is what I'm doing today, speak about my work and
trying to get other people on board to support it
and to implement it themselves.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
You change the minds of African farmers about what works
and the benefits that shakedown. Now talking to probably a
harder audience, and that's Western people, because a lot of
them would see ecological action is working against their immediate
well being.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
It's interesting, isn't it. I get this reaction, whether I'm
talking to Western farmers or African farmers, that what, Tony,
you want me to give up precious space on my
land when I'm trying to make a living from it,
And I gently explain and bring them on this journey.
You're not giving up anything. You will gain so much
(19:38):
more by planting or regenerating the right kinds of trees
and managing them the right ways, and crop yields actually
doubled in Niger for those farms that groubled doubled from
a low base doubled, very significant.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
And in the West, I mean, we have probably what
we'd consider more scientific and sophisticated approaches to agriculture, but
these things you'd like to see us change in the
West too.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Differently. Our agriculture will never be wilderness by definition, but
there's no reason for it to be a sterile biological desert,
and there are so many benefits, particularly as the climate changes.
It will reduce your costs and increase the productivity and
the sustainability of that land. There's much that we can do,
(20:31):
like well, conservation agriculture where you're not turning the soil
over and exposing it to the elements, agro forestry where
you have the right types of trees interspersed with either
your crops or your livestock. Many many different things, nature
based solutions that we can work more in tune with
(20:52):
nature as opposed to fighting it and destroying it.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
I've been through parts of New Zealand that some people
are say, look at this, it's beautiful, and then I've
heard other people say, no, it's a desert, meaning it's
all monocultural, it's only one plant species. Oil is thinning
down those types of things. I suppose the types of
things that you're interested in as well.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Yes, there is such a thing as a green desert
where it's for all intents and purposes, biologically dead. Now
you can get a good yield, but the cost of
that in terms of chemical and mechanical inputs, is very,
very high. There are many goods and services that nature
would provide for free if we allowed.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
It, right. I don't know if you go back to
Ovens Valley, the area where you grew up, and do
you ever go back there?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Yes, I still have family.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
There is there any message that you try to get
across there? Or is the phraser profit without honor in
his home country? Do you ever sort of wander around
and go, hey, there's things I've learned that could be
of use here.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Well, it's very interesting. Tobacco has phased out a few
years ago, and all the bird life's coming back. Birds
that I never saw as a child, it's coming back.
What would I say the opportunity, let's tread a little
bit more lightly on the earth and work with it
instead of destroying it.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
And instead of it being an impact on your wallet,
it is probably going to end up in the long
run benefiting you immensely.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Very much, your health, your sense of wellbeing, and I
have friends who are doing this regenitive agriculture today. They're
depth free, much less stressed and still profitable.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Right. Well, this has been fascinating talking. If you're Tony,
I wish you all the best and the work that
you're doing. And we'll go out on another piece of
music that I think talks about Africa's turn and because
you still have a heart for Africa very much. So
thank you Jones, I guess and I's been agronomus Tony
Ronaldo who's greening the earth as work is now in
(22:56):
place around the world, changing places that will bleak into
something which is now green and productive. It's been a
pleasure talking with you, and I look forward to being
back with real life next Sunday night. H Okay. That's great.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
For more from News Talks at b Listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to a podcast from Newstalk SEDB. Follow this
and our wide range of podcast now on iHeartRadio. Real Conversation,
Real Connection, It's Real Life with John Cowen on news
Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Gooday, Welcome to Real Life. I'm John Cowen and a
fascinating guest tonight and Osi who is helping to save
the world. His worker around the planet has earned him
an Order of Australia Award and his ideas are making
a difference in at least twenty nine countries already and
maybe will impact the whole planet. He's an agronomist and
he's widely known as the forest Maker. Welcome Tony Ronaldo.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thank you. Jonah's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's lovely to have an Aussie over the side of
the ditch. What's bringing you over here?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
So I've been invited and hosted by World Vision New
Zealand and we've had a series of meetings in Christ
Church in Auckland, Donors Churches University last night. It's been
a really action packed week but very right.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well, we'll find out a bit more about the things
that you've been sharing as you've been traveling around New
Zealand and the world, and your world changing idea came
to you as you sat next to a bush. Now
that sounds very much like Moses. The bush wasn't burning
and trying to talk to you at the time, though,
was it. So? I this was in Africa, and what
were you doing in Africa? What were you trying to achieve?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
So I was with the organization serving a mission in
Nijeripublic or Nigeri Public, West Africa, and my role in
the mission was as an agriculturist. And the backstory is,
over the previous two decades, much of the original dry
land forest had been cleared, mostly for agriculture, and there
(01:51):
are consequences for that kind of destruction in that environment,
massive deforestation, desertification, regular drought, and hunger. And my role
I was managing a small reforestation project, working with communities
to try and put at least some trees back in
that landscape.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
It's ironic that what the people were doing was probably
were trying to grow more food, and so they clear
off all the trees and the ground ends up producing
less food.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yes, very self defeating, but that's what they knew at
the time.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And so coming back to what you knew at the time.
You were trying a solution and it wasn't working. That's correct.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I was just following conventional methods. It's everything that I knew,
and it was standard practice. If you see a barren landscape,
the normal reaction is, oh, let's raise trees in a
nursery and plant them out right. In many environments, maybe
in New Zealand, where it's much more temperate, that works, yes,
But in these semiarid areas you could have an eighty
(02:49):
or ninety percent.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Failure eight right. That's not encouraging. No, no, especially for
you know, you were a professional, trained agronomus. This is
what you do. And to see only ten percent of
what you're putting in the ground surviving, that must have
been very discouraging.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
And I had the curse of youth, when you feel
like you're in incible and you can fix any problem yesterday,
and so it was very very discouraging. And not for
lack of trying. John. I did my reading, I experimented,
I consulted experts, but there's nothing sustainable or economically viable
that I came up with that would change the situation.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And it's an expensive thing to do. Isn't it reforestation
in that way too? Oh?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yes, some estimates vary between four hundred and eight thousand
dollars per hectare. So if you want scale, you're going
to need a lot of money, and you really do
need scale to have an effect.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
A lot of money, a lot of a lot of time.
You were doing this for years and it wasn't working. Okay, Well,
that sounds like a good setup for a good story.
And then you had an epiphany at a bush.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah. Yeah, So it's one of those really low days
when it really would have been quite easy to give
up and go home. Waste of money, waste of time.
Did I make a big mistake coming out here? But
I got to that point from it goes back to childhood,
and I'd said a child's prayer because I was so upset.
I was angry at the environmental destruction in my own country, Australia,
(04:17):
and what I read and saw from around the world,
plus this great injustice that we could grow in my
valley tobacco while children elsewhere were hungry. So I said
this kid's prayer, Please use me somehow somewhere to make
a difference. So that's what got me there, and I
probably would have given up, but I had this sense, no,
God doesn't make mistakes, and I shut up another very
(04:40):
heartfelt prayer, just asking for wisdom and insight on what
to do about this issue. At that point, i'd been
in the country two and a half years. I traveled
on these desert tracks are just sandy tracks to the
villagers nearly every week, eyes open, but totally blind to
(05:01):
the solution that had been at our feet the whole time.
And on this day you call them my epiphany. Really,
this bush, it would have always been there, but on
this day I really took notice of it. I took
the trouble to take a closer look. As soon as
you look at the shape of the leaf of any plant,
you've got one in the corner here.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Every space that's plastic, okay, filled me.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Nearly every species has a distinctive leaf shape, and it's
like a signature. As soon as I saw that, I
realized it's not a bush or a weed, it's a tree.
And I lent over. It's a very windy, dust blown place.
It lent over, brushed away the sand, and sure enough
there's a living stump that those shoots were coming out
(05:48):
of it.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Even though it was bush sized and bush shaped, it
was actually a tree regenerating from a big roots of
stem that was still in the ground.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Yes, And part of the reason why, apart from that
looking closely, part of the reason why I hadn't recognized
that is normal farming practice was to slash this what
they thought of as rubbish, nuisance sweet slash and burn
it every year. So I never saw these plants bigger
than half a meter or so.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Okay, but they were there in the ground, and you
and your insight was.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
This is the way to go. I don't need I'm
not fighting the Sahara desert. I don't need tens of
millions of dollars. Everything that I need is here because
there are millions of these suppressed trees across the landscape.
And the real battle line shifted from me think it's
a technical or biological solutions needed. It's shifted if people's
(06:43):
false beliefs about the value of trees on their land
brought such negative attitudes, they're weeds and destructive practices, cutting, slashing,
plowing over the top. That's where my attention had to
go into changing mindsets.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Okay, So that's actually sort of almost like two insights.
One is, there's these plants ready to go, all ready
to spring up and grow and do all the thing
that trees do, like provide shade and regeneration and all
that type of thing. And the other insight was the
problem is actually in the heads of the people that
are living here exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
So it's one thing to know what to do. It's
quite enough to know how to get people on board
with you.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Now that would have been the challenge. How did you
How did you get people to do as counterintuitive thing
of letting these things that they consider weeds grow? So
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
They actually called me the crazy white farmer, so they
didn't think much of me. Wanted to put trees on
their farm land, So I couldn't just go out there
and blast it to the world, this is what we
need to do. They would have chased me off their land.
But I got this idea. What if I just asked
for volunteers, and I worked in ten villages in those
early days, and I asked them, would you be willing
(07:57):
to come on this journey. We'll keep it as an
experiment for now in a small corner of your land,
poor and often hungry farmers are very risk averse, and
rightfully so it doesn't work, they're going to go hungry.
And these guys agreed. So we tested it on a
small corner and I said, well, just go for a year.
If you like it, we'll go another year and sea
(08:19):
where it heads. If not your land, your trees, do
what you like, hoping that they would like it. And
it was working. As soon as you select those trees
that you want, remove the excess stems because there's all
this competition. It's like releasing a coiled spring, and they
grow amazingly quickly, even in these dry regions.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Okay, so you give them a little bit of a
encouragement and they grow even better. And what do they
do for the farmers? I mean the farmers are considered
these useless space you know, taking up space and water
and whatever. What do they do for the farmer?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
If I put it in a nutshell, they make life
on earth possible. So what's the context. We have sixty
degrees celsius soil surface temperature. When the seedling germinates through that,
it's weakened. It's more susceptible to disease and insects. We
have seventy kilometer our winds that are sand blasts, so
they're braiding and desiccating, but more often outright bearing your crop.
(09:20):
And people have to plant and replant and replant as
many as six times, as many as six times, and
so they didn't have a magic pot of sea.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
This was their food supply.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
And the rainy season doesn't extend itself just because you're
laid in planting. It still stops at the same time.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
So if they're replanting and they don't get the rain, yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
They don't get their rain and they don't get the yields.
So it creates those microconditions and improves the fertility of
the soil plus all these other benefits wild foods, traditional medicines,
and I could go on.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Well, okay, so this worked. It worked with these ten farmers,
was it that you're working with. Yes, and we'll talk
a little bit more about how successful it is will
wide now, but its spread didn't.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
It Eventually there's a few hiccups along the way because
people don't like to change what they're doing very easily.
But in time it's spread across that country at the
rate of a quarter of a million hectes per year,
and after twenty years there were two hundred million trees
without planting a single one.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
That's amazing, two hundred million trees and that was just
in one country, and then it's spread across another eight
countries in Africa. And then how many countries in the
world are using your technique now?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So World Vision alone has introduced it into twenty nine
countries at different stages. Some have very well advanced, others
perhaps just starting. But it's in at least twenty nine countries.
And the thing to keep in mind, yes, I did
champion and develop this method, but it's actually based on
traditional knowledge and it's also intuitive. So I regularly come
(11:02):
across people in total isolation. They simply figured it.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Out right, Yeah, if you just My guess is Tony
Ronaldo in Australian who's done amazing work around the world
helping to regreen places that have become bleak and desert
like through changing people's mindsets about what works on their
types of soil. An amazing guy. I'll talk more about
how he got to be what he is and how
do we get to do what he's doing. This is
(11:27):
real life on news Talk.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
ZEDB Intelligent interviews with interesting people it's real life on
Newstalk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Welcome back to real life. I'm John Cown talking with
agronomist Tony Ronaldo about his work that he's been doing
in Africa and that music is from Niger, a place
where he spent many, many years. It's a song called
IGAs Milan by leafid Iligardad. Probably not many people know that,
but Tony, it's great to have you in New Zealand.
(11:58):
You grew up in a pretty idyllic place in northern Victoria.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yes, Mertleford, northeast Victoria and a lot of bushland around
Mountain Stream. Good place to up, lovely place. I was
very blessed to be in that area.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And even though it's beautiful and temperate and wonderful, you
became distressed at what you saw people doing to the place.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Well, there was a lot of bulldozing of the native bushland.
And even as a boy, I certainly hadn't studied ecology,
but there's something that didn't add up about leaving steep
Hills bear for years on end and disappearance of wildlife
and erosion gullies for me. So yeah, that made me cross.
Not that I'm against progress, but it seemed so destructive
(12:39):
and unnecessary to treat the environment in that way. I
thought there must be a better way.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
So what you saw happening to the environment around you
that powerfully influenced you. Another thing, which I know was
a big influence was your mother's faith.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Yes, yeah, so all this anger is good and well,
but if you stay there, you just stew and probably
become very bitter. And I was frustrated that I didn't
have a voice to change the adult world. But the
one thing that I did have, Mum, had a big
influence on me, and I felt, well, I do have
power to at least pray and just just ask God
(13:15):
please use me somehow somewhere to make a difference in
this broken world.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
So you seem to have this philly natural observation what
was happening in the world about ecologically, and you couple
that with your faith, and that gave you sort of
an impetus on a track that you're still on. And
you trained first of all as an agronomist, yes, in
armadel and New South Wales, right, and then you came
(13:40):
over here into the bit of theological training and Henderson Henderson,
and then of all the places you know you could
have gone back to beautiful northern Victoria to do it
and tried to influence there. Why did you end up
in Niger Republic.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Well, I joined this organization serving in mission and much
of their work that they work around the world, but
much of their work is in Africa. And right from
childhood I had this love and fascination for all things African,
so it was sort of inevitable. And then on the
form you fill out this this application form and what
are your interests? To this day, I don't know where
(14:16):
it came from, but I wrote dry land agriculture. Yes,
why dry land and not humid or whatever. But that
set the die and I couldn't when I realized, oh no,
I'd have to learn French and very harsh environment and
the things I'd learned about this very very difficult country.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
So your love of greedy and nature and everything like
this has led you to this bleak desert land and
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I couldn't wriggle out of it, try as I would.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
But the best possible place to go Africa. When you
arrived there drought, poverty, hardship and all the things that
flow on from that illness and problems. How does that
bleak situation in Africa fit in with your understanding of
what God wants to do? That must be very challenging
(15:07):
at times.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Well, my understanding of scripture is that God is a
god of love. This was never his intention, and it
breaks his heart to see that suffering as much as
anybody else's. And so it's a wonderful motivation. How can
we repair this situation and help people to live dignified,
(15:30):
healthy and happy lives.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
So it must have been very satisfying in the end
to see that these situations can be repaired. They're not
just sort of You don't just sort of shrug and
walk away saying there's no hope for them.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It's a story of It's a story of hope because
in the most unlikely place, on the edge of the
Sahara Desert, in one of the poorest countries in the world,
under extremely difficult conditions, and yet this story is a
very positive story of transformation. So I'm very blessed to
have had that life experience. And today as I travel
(16:05):
around the world, so many people are anxious and hopeless
about the future. I can say if under those conditions
those people can affect such a positive change.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
What's our excuse? Yeah, that's great. Now, you said before
that it was years though before you sleep had started
to see the results, before you actually even got on
a track that actually produced those good results. Mission work
is a bit of a mystery to a lot of people.
And if I could ask a blunt question, what's in
it for you? Why would you do something like that?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Well, there was that child's anger and desire to make
things better, both in the environment and to address severe poverty.
And so in many ways, I was doing what I
was passionate about doing.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
So it was a passion led thing, passion lad.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
It was a way of being showing gratefulness to God
all the good things that God has done for us.
This is how it can show my gratitude and to
serve God as I serve people. So yeah, it was
never easy. There are lots of hard times and even
impossible times, but always there was this underlying sense that
I was in the right place.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Now, whatever things I've picked up from you, and I've
been reading a bit about you, and it's not something
that I pick up from a lot of Christians. It's
a sense of stewardship. You know, there is this idea
that some Christians have of let's just get what God's
given us and use it and use it up. But
you have a sense of stewardship, if that be right?
(17:36):
And what is that?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Yeah? I feel there's a major lack of understanding of
the full the range of scriptures that talk about God's creation.
For a start, it doesn't actually belong to us, It
belongs to God and he must have been the original environmentalist.
When you think of the beauty and the intricacy of
God's creation in Genesis, it actually talks about yes, yes,
(18:03):
till the land, but take care of it, and we
seem to manage that. How can we make benefit out
of this and forget a little bit about looking after it?
Speaker 2 (18:12):
So you come from an evangelical tradition, and evangelicals perhaps
even less noted for being concerned in this area. But
do you think things are changing in that area.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
I'm seeing a real awakening Christians becoming much more aware
of their responsibility to care for God's creation.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
And that's why you find yourself working within an organization
which has a Christian heart. What is it that you're
who are you working with and what what's your role
within them?
Speaker 3 (18:41):
So I've just turned twenty five with World Vision Australia.
Twenty five years with World Vision, Yes, I don't know
where all those years went. And my current role is
Principal Climate Action Advisor. Fancy name for what I do.
Is what I'm doing today, speak about my work and
trying to get other people on board to support it
and to implement it themselves.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
You change the minds of African farmers about what works
and the benefits that shakedown. Now talking to probably a
harder audience, and that's Western people, because a lot of
them would see ecological action is working against their immediate
well being.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
It's interesting, isn't it. I get this reaction, whether I'm
talking to Western farmers or African farmers, that what, Tony,
you want me to give up precious space on my
land when I'm trying to make a living from it,
And I gently explain and bring them on this journey.
You're not giving up anything. You will gain so much
(19:38):
more by planting or regenerating the right kinds of trees
and managing them the right ways, and crop yields actually
doubled in Niger for those farms that groubled doubled from
a low base doubled, very significant.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
And in the West, I mean, we have probably what
we'd consider more scientific and sophisticated approaches to agriculture, but
these things you'd like to see us change in the
West too.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Differently. Our agriculture will never be wilderness by definition, but
there's no reason for it to be a sterile biological desert,
and there are so many benefits, particularly as the climate changes.
It will reduce your costs and increase the productivity and
the sustainability of that land. There's much that we can do,
(20:31):
like well, conservation agriculture where you're not turning the soil
over and exposing it to the elements, agro forestry where
you have the right types of trees interspersed with either
your crops or your livestock. Many many different things, nature
based solutions that we can work more in tune with
(20:52):
nature as opposed to fighting it and destroying it.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
I've been through parts of New Zealand that some people
are say, look at this, it's beautiful, and then I've
heard other people say, no, it's a desert, meaning it's
all monocultural, it's only one plant species. Oil is thinning
down those types of things. I suppose the types of
things that you're interested in as well.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Yes, there is such a thing as a green desert
where it's for all intents and purposes, biologically dead. Now
you can get a good yield, but the cost of
that in terms of chemical and mechanical inputs, is very,
very high. There are many goods and services that nature
would provide for free if we allowed.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
It, right. I don't know if you go back to
Ovens Valley, the area where you grew up, and do
you ever go back there?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Yes, I still have family.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
There is there any message that you try to get
across there? Or is the phraser profit without honor in
his home country? Do you ever sort of wander around
and go, hey, there's things I've learned that could be
of use here.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Well, it's very interesting. Tobacco has phased out a few
years ago, and all the bird life's coming back. Birds
that I never saw as a child, it's coming back.
What would I say the opportunity, let's tread a little
bit more lightly on the earth and work with it
instead of destroying it.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
And instead of it being an impact on your wallet,
it is probably going to end up in the long
run benefiting you immensely.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Very much, your health, your sense of wellbeing, and I
have friends who are doing this regenitive agriculture today. They're
depth free, much less stressed and still profitable.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Right. Well, this has been fascinating talking. If you're Tony,
I wish you all the best and the work that
you're doing. And we'll go out on another piece of
music that I think talks about Africa's turn and because
you still have a heart for Africa very much. So
thank you Jones, I guess and I's been agronomus Tony
Ronaldo who's greening the earth as work is now in
(22:56):
place around the world, changing places that will bleak into
something which is now green and productive. It's been a
pleasure talking with you, and I look forward to being
back with real life next Sunday night. H Okay. That's great.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
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