Cotton farming: "Our Soil and Our Sweat"
This video offers a small window into the work of producing cotton in Burkina Faso.
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As one cotton farmer told me, "We in Burkina, we export our soil and our sweat...
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What are we left with? Tired soil and tired bodies."
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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.
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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.