Cotton farming: "Our Soil and Our Sweat"
This video offers a small window into the work of producing cotton in Burkina Faso.
As one cotton farmer told me, "We in Burkina, we export our soil and our sweat...
What are we left with? Tired soil and tired bodies."
Farmer Field School: A Peace Corps Experience
This video was produced for the Peace Corps in 2009, to help incoming volunteers understand the idea of a "Farmer Field School." It features work I did with farmers in southern Mali.
Shea: From Nuts to Butter
Created for Malian National Television, these videos teach rural Malian women how to make improved shea butter. (Local production techniques result in a shea butter that cannot be exported. New techniques and the formation of cooperatives allow women to sell some of their butter for a profit). The production was shot in a rural village in Mali, West Africa. One woman teaches another how to improve her practices in order to make export-quality shea butter.
These videos have aired on ORTM, the national TV station in Mali, and used in training events in Mali. The women in this video, Minata and Afu, are part of a cooperative that is seeking to sell their sell butter.