Millet is the staple food of Mali. The Malian government has declared domestic food production to be insufficient. Agricultural research efforts have been established in order to find better growing methods and create better conditions so farmers may produce crops of higher yield. The farmers of Mali cannot produce enough food to sustain their country's need for staple crops. There are programs that have begun working with partners and grants from both the African community and some western countries.

One successful program is the Cinzana Agricultural Research Station. They are dedicated to producing sustainable increases in crop production and productivity through improved seed breeding. Initiated in1979, Cinzana Agricultural Research Station was a partnership between the Government of Mali, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Crops Research Institute for the Semiarid Tropics (ICRISAT), and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture.

Cinzana is a small village lying between the Niger and Bani rivers in Mali's most important millet-growing region. Residing on 280 hectares of land, the station has plenty of soil from expanding research and seed breeding activity. The station supplies its own electricity with three generators and water is pumped through a pipeline from a source 7 kilometers away.

Some of the successful methods that Cinzana Research Station developed are quite interesting and provide a GREAT BEGINNING LESSON ON CULTIVATION METHODS AND CROP PRODUCTION FOR STUDENTS.

Cinzana Research Station found that millet and cowpea intercropping increased the millet harvest by approximately 10%, from 646 kilograms a hectare up to 722 kilograms a hectare.

Intercropping: sowing the seeds of different crops together, considering that one crop helps the stability of the other.

The methods directed by the Cinzana Research Station seem quite simple, but have proven to sustain higher yields in millet. Farmers traditionally scattered seeds randomly in the field. The Cinzana Research Station found that planting the seeds carefully in alternate rows increased the yields. They learned to plant one row of cowpea next to every row of millet. Because of nodule bacteria, cowpea can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and use it to enrich the soil. This also helps with using the available moisture, reducing the risk of losing the crop when rains are uneven. This method of intercropping also makes cultivation easier. Cowpea has a resistance to striga, a semi-parasitic wild plant. Cowpea keeps the weed from expanding. Without the help from the cowpea, the millet crop would be overwhelmed by the striga. Furthermore, cowpea and millet have different growing periods which leaves the fragile soil covered longer helping to protect against erosion by rain and wind.

Mount Hombori: The Hombori Project
Mount Hombori is a plateau rising high above the semiarid region of the Sahel. It is important because of the plateau's sustained level of biodiversity. The mountain is also a tourist attraction that helps bring income to the local communities. As populations grow, tourist traffic increases and the climate continues to change. Mount Hombori stays significantly the same. There is locally supported protection of Mount Hombori. People have been evaluating different ways to protect its biodiversity while continuing to allow the economically productive tourist business to continue. The project focuses on understanding the climate changes throughout the Sahel as well as investigating the human impact on biodiversity.

Saving Mali's Migratory Elephants

Mali has been home to desert elephants whose numbers are dwindling. The elephants live in the most extreme environmental conditions, constantly in search for water. These migratory elephants travel almost 300 miles in a year, as far as 35 miles in a day. Their survival depends on how often they find water, as well as on human actions. There have been many elephant populations to live throughout the Sahel, but in most areas poachers have killed too many of the elephants. The Tuareg nomads have shared their territory with the white elephants without ever hunting them. Now, only Mali's elephants remain.

Scientists and conservationists attach collars to some of the elephants in order to track the remaining herds. The scientists have been able to learn the elephants' migratory routes and feeding habits as they travel throughout the region. They have found that the elephants have some permanent and some temporary watering holes.

The WILD Foundation is a non-profit conservation organization that searches to find more ways to help the desert elephants. They say that the people of Mali show great respect for the elephants. When drought dried up the elephants' last remaining water hole in 1983, the government trucked in water for the elephants.

It is important for people to learn more about the elephants' migratory routes, where there watering holes may be and where they go for food and cover. This will help keep human activity out of the way of the elephant's important migration. These elephants can live for 60 years. Scientists use photographs and satellite images to detect the differences between the individual elephants. The shape of their tusks and ear flaps help scientists determine the differences.

Scientists have been able to study the social interaction between elephants. Female and young elephants cluster together in protective groups. The female elephants will circle around their young if they feel danger is near. Each group follows along with one leader, a matriarch. The older the matriarch, the better leader she is. A matriarch is the grandmother or great grandmother of her group. The grown male elephants tend to stick to themselves. Elephants communicate with each other through several different calls. Some of the tones they use are too low in frequency for humans to hear. Their calls can be heard by other elephants up to six miles away. Some scientists think that the elephants can hear with their feet. They can detect seismic waves in the ground up to a hundred feet away.

Religion

Around eighty percent of the people in Mali are Islamic. Islam has been a factor in Africa for over 1000 years. Though each ethnic group speaks a different language, nearly eighty percent of the people of Mali communicate in Bambara, the language of the marketplace.

For the Bamana, man is the seed of the universe. His art is used in ceremonies intended to control the environment. Man does not exist as an individual, but as a person (the word person means mask from the Latin word per-sona- the artificial face worn by actors), as suggested by Marcel Mauss (Laude in Huet 1978, p.17). Marcel Griaule (who has done extensive studies of indigenous cultures) has written that the dancer plays the part reserved to the wooden object, the sculptured mask that covers the dancer's face or head (ibid. p.17). Initiation societies integrate the Bamana beyond the village, bringing together persons for common purposes. There are six different initiation societies among the Bamana (resources do not agree on the hierarchy of these societies) each with its own founding ancestor, god or spirit, and its own symbols, masks and rituals. Much of the art the blacksmith produces is for one or the other of these societies.

Among the Bamana, the Dogon, the Senufo and the Kurumba (and others of the western Africa), the earth is the symbol of female fruitfulnesswhether in times of a rich harvest or in times of drought. When the rain falls, it represents the male life-giving principle to the farmer. Life has constantly to be renewed, the rhythm of the seasons signifying death and rebirth. In order to intervene in these events, man has invented an official who is known by different namesMaster of the Land, Father of the Land, Lord of the Land. The bearer of the position is traditionally a descendant of the first man who made the land arable and founded the first village. He occupies the position of high priest and decides when the work in the fields is to be done. He carries out the ritual of the earth; calls for rain in drought and sends it away if it lasts too long. The Master of the Land is the spiritual leader and preserver of tradition (Wassing 1968, p.178).