Posted on 05/23/2025 9:08:28 AM PDT by piasa
“The grassland landscape is so dominated by inedible mathenge trees...”
“It was seen as [...] a source of fuel and animal fodder.”
Whose brilliant idea was it to use inedible trees as a source of animal fodder?
This reminds me of that Simpson’s episode “Bart the Mother”. The town gets overrun with Bolivian tree lizards:
Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn’t that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we’re overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They’ll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren’t the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we’re prepared for that. We’ve lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we’re stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that’s the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
The kudzu of Kenya.
We have Ailanthus pollution here on the upper- to middle East Coast. It’s the tree that can grow in the dirt of a sidewalk crack to a height of 20 feet, destroying the sidewalk and pipes beneath it. It usurps the sides of highways, and inserts itself deep in the center of decorative shrubs on otherwise impeccable landscapes, where merely cutting it off at ground level (assuming you can get loppers that far into the shrub) is completely useless, since seemingly within weeks its central root digs itself halfway to its ancient home in China, and will gladly regenerate. Don’t get me started on its messy, stinky blossom clusters.
Laughably, China calls it the “tree of Heaven.”
“Surprised some idiot has brought one to the US yet.”
We have native Prosopis here in the USA South Texas,Central and West Texas are full of them they are pronounced MESSquite here. Cattle freely graze in the shade they provide and the large pods they drop are full of high protein beans that cattle and people both eat with vigor. Honey bees turn the flowers that made those beans into a dark rich spicy honey second to none it’s high dollar gourmet stuff. The wood which is one of the few that can be burnt green is the basis for all South Texas BBQ. There is a James Beard award-winning location in Austin named Green Mesquite they on my burn yeah green prosopis. Being a true legume prosopis also doesn’t need any nitrogen fertilizers they make their own from thin air via nodules on their roots. They have a deep tap root and do not need any irrigation either they can live and thrive down to 10cm of rainfall per annum only agave or catus do better.
My families 280+ year old cattle land is covered in them wild boar also eat the pods and shoots with vigor we shoot the hogs and BBQ them too. prosopis can be coppiced and it will grow back to a full sized bush vs a single truck tree in ten years with even more pod production and many stems that goats,boar, or sheep will eat. The thorns come after the shoot stage. You can coppice with standards and get back to full sized trees if you know how to manage a coppice with standards it typical forestry knowledge. <<< this is the issue in Kenya the blacks don’t know jack about agroforestry not how to manage a combined grassland / woodland or chaparral / savanna landscape. The root of their issue is not knowing how to manage what should be a winning combination. Texas has a nearly identical climate to sub Saharan Africa the difference is whites knowing how to manage the environment.
REDO OF KUDZU????
prosopis is edible. The pods are full of high protein beans, the shoots of a coppiced tree are readily eaten by goats,deer,boar,sheep too. You can also take a hydroaxe to the shrub sized ones and turn them into a pile of leaves and wood shavings bail that up in sealed bales water it and add in a silage starter culture let it turn to silage and come back in a couple months. Cattle or sheep will tear up that silage with glee. You can feed the raw hydroaxed piles if you mix in molasses and urea cattle will take right to them, sheep too. The thorns are distorted by the shredding of the hydroaxe. The added benefit of doing this is the tree returns as dozens and dozens of shoots from the root ball each one of them now going to produce flowers,pods and leaves. You come back every 5-10 years and hydroaxe them again and again it’s sustainable no fertilizer,no irrigation fodder. There is a reason the Chinese call those same species of trees the “trees from heaven” they make food from scrublands,honey too, the wood is strong and has a good BBQ smoke. South Texas BBQ is all smoked over mesquite coals, the literal word barbacoa is the root and it means to burn down wood to coals and pit cook over or in them.
Your image could be anywhere in South or West Texas by the look of it. Except for the obvious overgrazing between the tree stands. They have a management problem give me and my family this identical land and we will have cattle, goats and wild hogs thriving on it. Why? It’s not the trees it’s the ignorance of the Africans vs first world Whites.
I would two hectares of solar panels 2.5 meters off the ground and seed native grasses under them the shade from the panels makes the grass grow more not less as it slows evaporation and transporation grass can only use a few percentages of the sunlight that hits it per day the rest is turned to heat and water loss the data is clear grasses grow better under partial shade. The sun moves in the sky fixed panels don’t so every sq meter gets sun at some point in the day. 2 hectares in sub Saharan Africa level sun is 2 megawatts per hour 8 hours per day plus the rise and fall of 2 hours on each end to that plateau. With that power I would electrify my workers village and AC the heck out of my huge Villa style estate in the middle of that cattle station.
There would be so much solar energy left over I would ask a hydrogen group to set up a high pressure alkaline electrolysis set up and make compressed H2 gas at 200bar to run every ICE engine the heart desires from side-by-sides to motorbikes to pickups using fiberglass aluminum lined packs. Aluminum is impervious to H2 and doesn’t brittle either storing H2 was solved decades ago it’s just myth that you can’t keep it stored now. The issue here and everywhere else in Africa is the natives don’t have the skills or the intelligence being an average 80 IQ in sub Saharan Africa to manage the system or land. It’s just cold hard facts.
I love these people who think they are smart enough to try to control the environment and make it do what they want.
I think the problem with this plant, unlike the Southwest and Texas is it is poisonous and kills livestock.
Image combining Texas mesquite with locoweed and all your cattle ate it.
Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison journeys with the UN World Food Programme to the country of Niger in the African Sahel to see an innovative land recovery project within the Great Green Wall of Africa that is harvesting rainwater, increasing food security, and rehabilitating the ecosystem.Inside Africa's Food Forest Mega-Project | 14:10
Andrew Millison | 636K subscribers | 6,293,994 views | November 13, 2024
We have armadillos now in GA. Are they in Ohio yet? I know they’re in TN and KY, I’ve seen them dead by the side of the road.
I saw many armadillos when I lived in Florida, both alive and dead. But now I have been in Kentucky for 19 years, and have never seen any armadillos here. I figured the Kentucky climate is too cold for them.
I know I’ve seen them well into TN. Pretty sure I’ve seen them in KY on I-65. Near TN, between the state line and BG. Will look closely next time I go.
And just think.... some government-funded goon probably got a bonus, a raise and a nice retirement plan for coming up with that (just one) idiotic and devastingly destructive “idea”.
Both trees contain toxic alkaloids in their leaves and when an animal eats more than 20% of its feed intake from either they get degenerative disease and it can kill them. That’s raw leaves the pods of either trees do not contain those alkaloids in high enough amounts to have the same effect. You need to grind the pods up and mix them with straw,hay or grasses OR turn them into silage with the leaves and small stems for either variety. The acids formed in the silage process drastically cuts down the alkaloids in the leaves and stems this makes it safe to eat for cattle ,sheep and goats in greater than 20% rates. If you don’t have the knowledge , tools and most importantly the bacterial culture to make silage you need cowboys to run the cattle to limit their intake of the leaves and pods which they will eat due to them being sweet at 13% sugar. This is the difference from developed world cowboy culture and knowledge and third world turn them loose a s maybe herd them on foot with a stick in your hand. Clearly the article shows they just free range them and hope for the best. Again third world vs first world we use SxS Polaris, quads and sometimes motobikes to herd with way more efficient than horses and light years ahead of on foot with a stick in BFE Africa.
At least someone is trying to show them how to use the plant.
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