The Sahel, home to over 100M people, marks the frontier where human habitation and agriculture meets the Sahara desert. Farmers here have been managing crops and livestock with scattered trees for generations creating the vast agroforestry parklands that dominates the landscapes. Indegineous trees here are essential to locals as they provide food,medicine, timber and climate regulation. For decades this area has had high climate change, desertification and worsening food insecurity. Recently widespread regreening has happened because farmers have encouraged the regeneration of young trees that grow naturally in their fields, a practice known as farmer managed natural regeneration heralded as the corner stone of modern climate smart agriculture.

Made by leading Ugandan documentarist Nathan Ochole, this film explains what agroforestry is and the myriad of contributions that it has made to Uganda. It starts in the highlands of Kabale, where trees on farms prevented landslides and floods, provided fruit to villagers and made their agriculture more sustainable. It then roams to the parklands of northern Uganda where Borassus palms and Shea trees provide valuable nutrition and cash earnings (particularly for women in the case of Shea) and improve the yields of the crops grown near them. It visits Kapchorwa where we see the use of the nitrogen-fixing shrub Calliandra as feed for dairy cows and then documents the improvements that orange trees have made to livelihoods in Namatumba.

Along the way, the film interviews farmers as well as Dr Clement Okia, the representative of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Uganda, and Dr Hilary Agaba, Programme Leader Agroforestry at Uganda’s National Forestry Resources Research Institute (NaFORRI NARO). It was produced by Cathy Watson, formerly of Tree Talk and Muvle Trust in Uganda and now Head of Programme Development at ICRAF, and by Australian AVID volunteer, Laura Keenan.

Our story follows Satyavati – a young woman from the Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh, India, as she compels her community to adopt a farming practice that is revolutionizing small-scale farming across India. Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) is a farming practice that believes in the natural growth of crops without adding any fertilizers and pesticides, or any other foreign elements. After decades of conventional agriculture, farmers in India found themselves in debt traps owing to loans taken to meet the high cost of fertilizers and pesticides. ZBNF promises not only to alleviate farmer debt, but also to increase yields, while alleviating the impacts of climate change, deforestation and land degradation.

Smallholder farmers are key actors in the global food system, producing roughly 80 percent of the food consumed in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Yet, the voices of smallholders are often neglected by policy makers when trade deals are negotiated or regulations established. Increasing the participation of smallholder farmers in agricultural trade has the potential to boost livelihoods, improve food security, and fuel economic growth.

Within an international trade regime marked by ever-more-stringent quality and safety standards, sophisticated value-chains, and byzantine contracts, the challenge of linking smallholders to markets is no simple task. Considering the increasing importance of agricultural trade to food security, it is also not a task that we can afford to ignore.

What is the role of smallholder farmers in the global exchange of agricultural goods? What barriers do trade regulations and standards impose for smallholders to access local, regional, and global markets? How can we build an enabling environment for trade in which smallholders can participate more fully?

Regreening the planet looks at the profit that comes from the recovery of ecosystems in Spain, Egypt and India. Restoring ecosystems does not only generate ecological profit but also economic. In Regreening the desert, the makers of VPRO Backlight showed that the greening of deserts is very well possible. They followed the American-Chinese cameraman and ecologist John D. Liu.He filmed how an inhospitable dry mountain area as large as the Netherlands was transformed into a lush green oasis. The greening caused not only ecological recovery but also economic growth of the region. Since then, John D. Liu has traveled the world to inspire people in other countries to follow this example.Dutch ecologist Willem Ferwerda was inspired by Liu and decided to work together with him.

This cooperation has grown into a new organization, Commonland, a foundation with a clear mission: to restore the ecosystems on a large scale worldwide. The point of departure is that restoring landscapes not only yields ecological profits but also money, work and hope for the people living there.We can see that this works in Egypt: in 1977 Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish SEKEM, experimented to green the desert at Cairo. In 2014, SEKEM has grown to be the leading supplier of ecological products in Egypt and far beyond. Dr. Abouleish has built not only a flourishing business in the desert but a complete community with schools and their own medical and cultural facilities.

A better proof that greening and social innovation go hand in hand is almost impossible to find.That all areas can grow alive, even if they are completely eroded by erosion, also appears from the special story of Indian Jadav "Molai" Payeng. When he was 17, he worked for a replanting project in Assam province. After the project was completed and the other laborers had disappeared, he decided to continue propagating wood by hand. Now, Molai forest is 300 acres and populated by elephants, Bengal tigers, deer, rhino and numerous birds. Payeng is also called The Forest Man in India because he has been able to create a jungle singlehandedly.That is something that Spain might well use. Large areas in Spain are dry and abandoned due to misused agricultural subsidies, unintentional water and land use and large-scale erosion.

The population is turning its back on the countryside and moves to the cities, but there is also unemployment there. In Ayoo de Vidriales, a graying village in the middle of Spain, agricultural engineer Pedro Alonso Fernandez has begun to recover land. He wants to show that the Spanish silted and eroded soils are in fact Green Gold.Originally broadcasted by VPRO in 2014.

© VPRO Backlight Octobre 2014On VPRO broadcast you will find nonfiction videos with English subtitles, French subtitles and Spanish subtitles, such as documentaries, short interviews and documentary series.VPRO Documentary publishes one new subtitled documentary about current affairs, finance, sustainability, climate change or politics every week. We research subjects like politics, world economy, society and science with experts and try to grasp the essence of prominent trends and developments.

Credits:Directed by: Rob van Hattum & Gijs Meyer SwanteeProduction: Helen Goossens Senior editors: Henneke Hagen & Frank WieringEnglish, French and Spanish subtitles: Ericsson.French and Spanish subtitles are co-funded by European Union.