Land ! Land ! We need land !

Today is a Congolese holiday. Still, 15 minutes after chapel, John the IT tech had our replacement wireless radio ready to go back up into the tree. The climbing rope was already in place and Yulu was putting on the safety harness to climb the 60 dizzying feet to the antenna mount. Forty minutes later the antenna mast was in place and John confirmed that we had a good signal. The internet is back up and running after nearly 2 weeks down.

A holiday morning should be a good time for thinking about the details of an extension database, don't you think? The office is quiet. Interruptions can be avoided. Well, not this morning. The problem is land. Songo, the village between Lusekele and Vanga, has run out. There isn't enough land for everybody to plant fields like they want to. Perhaps inevitably, some people think that the only way to survive is to squat on the land of other people and hope to avoid eviction before the harvest.

For at least ten years families with land bordering the Lusekele concession have tested ACDI's resolve to protect its land. The ACDI staff have tried to resolve the disputes reasonably, peacefully. They have appealed to the church's legal title to the land. They have trotted out the original traditional agreements made with land chiefs. They have even had the governor defend ACDI's right to the land. Local justice can be brutal. Christian compassion often counseled patience. Police beatings and fines would fall on poor families ill-fixed to handle additional troubles. Usually the incursions last a single planting season.

But one family seems to be playing for much higher stakes. They have cleared fields on concession land three years running. Deaf to reason they have begun to clear Lusekele forest again this year. And they upped the ante by claiming that ACDI has illegally occupied half the concession (nearly 125 acres) that really belongs to the people of Songo. The riot that interrupted my database reflections this morning came from the land chiefs from a rival village on the other side of Lusekele.

"If ACDI can't put an end to the incursions by Songo people, we will," the assistant chef yelled, veins popping on his throat. Timothée narrowly averted an informal mélée between the two factions. For ten minutes abuse was hurled back and forth until people had vented a store of frustration. But it shows that producing more food from a fixed portion of land is not just an interesting problem in agronomy. Land is life for people depending almost completely on agriculture for their livelihood.

Every field has to produce more AND produce it more often. Subsistence rain-fed agriculture in our area yields 10% to 20% of what an expert North American farmer does, sometimes less. Reserve land that can be left in soil building fallow is already a forgotten luxury for the people of Songo. More efficient crop varieties can mean higher yields where nutrients are scarce. Soil building legume plants can speed up rebuilding soil nutrients. Closer attention to best farming practices can boost results too.

We need more time before subsistence farmers reach the breaking point. Songo "leaders" this morning asked, "What is ACDI going to do to satisfy our need for fields?" The real answer is let's all learn better ways to farm and nurture the land as quickly as we can. Further incursions on concession land threatens to compromise ACDI's research and extension activities. They distract extension staff from helping people focus on better farming. They undermine ACDI's efforts to generate income that supports research and extension activities. They degrade the last remnants of forest reserve in the area. And if they continue they will provoke inter-village violence.

We pray that people can stay focused, adopting proven improvements in farming and using the land God gave us much more efficiently.