Our partner villages are currently busy collecting the seeds we will use for our new sites. Since Hommes et Terre works with sites of about 250 ha, this means we need about 2500 kg of seeds per village!

Instead of buying seeds externally, Hommes et Terre works mainly with local seeds, collected by our partner villages. To ensure that our sites will grow into biodiverse forests, we use a combination of woody (Acacias, Balanites, Zizyphus, Baobab, Neem, Piliostigma) and herbaceous seeds. Not only are these seeds well adapted to the harsh conditions they will have to grow in, and thus have a better chance of germinating and growing into strong trees, they also provide an opportunity for our partner villages to make the restoration of their degraded land pay off from the start.

Once all the seeds have been collected, Hommes et Terre purchases a part of the seeds from its partner villages. The remaining seeds are a contribution from the villages themselves. In this way, our partner villages become co-investors, making their future forests more valuable to them.