- Alfred Fornah
AZOLLA: MOTHER NATURE’S MIRACLE FOR OUR TIME
Imagine you could hold a miracle on the tip of your finger, something that could produce clean energy, improve farmers yields, fatten their livestock and help reverse climate change. You imagine well but mother nature got there first!
This tiny fern, Azolla, which you can literally balance on the tip of your finger sequesters more CO2 every year for every hectare planted than either mangroves or forests, yet can be grown in harmony, actually aiding forest ecology. Storing a massive 30 metric tonnes – Azolla stores more than 8 times more co2 than mangroves and 4-6 times more than forests – enough carbon stored in one hectare to offset the average carbon footprint of three EU citizens, or 6 cars, for a year.
And Azolla’s helped the world combat climate change before, 50 million years ago! So effective at scrubbing carbon that it has it’s own geological period – the Arctic Azolla Event - when scientists deduce Azolla dramatically helped cool the earths' atmosphere down to temperatures associated with pre-industrial revolution levels.
Such are the myriad benefits of Azolla, it’s rightly been called “Green Gold” - not only does it store carbon efficiently but Azolla's a top bio-fertilizer, used by the Chinese and Vietnamese for 1000 years+ fixing nitrogen at three times the rate of legumes, Azola also makes for nutritious livestock feed, and can purify water and reduce mosquito populations by 95%. Azolla can even produce clean, affordable energy with no impact on crop production or deforestation.
So, as for us, we’re sold! We see a truly miraculous little plant, able to reduce farmers costs, improve soil condition and boost yields sustainably; a plant to protect people’s health and provide clean water but above all, a tiny little plant able to efficiently scrub and store co2, a tiny plant with an outsize impact and perhaps a bigger piece of the puzzle than it's diminutive size suggests!
On our recent field trip to Sanda Mabolontor we learnt our partners Hope are planning on trialing some of Azolla’s multiple benefits at their sustainable demonstration farm, Hope Sakuma, with help of dedicated volunteers from Najala university and with the Azolla Foundation providing world-class technical advice and assistance.
We’ll keep a close eye on developments at Hope to see the potential to scale this innovative eco bio-fertilizer, which can also offset such huge amounts of co2. Azolla, very much a miracle for our times, imagined by mother nature and well-placed to contribute to our most urgent crisis, Climate Change and the world's climate emergency.
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