Profiles: Using Talents and Trades to Practice Sustainability

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Dr. Rene Haller built a sustainable farm in Mombasa, Kenya to help end hunger among 500 workers and their families. The farm eventually prospered enough to where workers can sell extra food at the market.
Dr. Rene Haller built a sustainable farm in Mombasa, Kenya to help end hunger among 500 workers and their families. The farm eventually prospered enough to where workers can sell extra food at the market.
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Zona Everett practices the art of dowsing, locating water by means of a divining rod.
Zona Everett practices the art of dowsing, locating water by means of a divining rod.
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B.K Huang invented the Solar Dryer, a giant solar collector that helps dry tobacco leaves without using a lot of oil.
B.K Huang invented the Solar Dryer, a giant solar collector that helps dry tobacco leaves without using a lot of oil.

In celebration of little-known MOTHER-type folks all over.

Backwoods Agronomist: Dr. Rene Haller

Back in 1959, a cement company with 500 acres to spare (near the port city of Mombasa in Kenya) decided to use its surplus land to grow vegetables for the families of its 500 African workers. Rene Halter — a Swiss agronomist who, at the time, was working on a coffee plantation in neighboring Tanzania — was given a contract to organize the project.

An energetic experimenter, the then 25-year-old Haller not only succeeded in growing vegetables on what had always been considered uncultivable bush land, but managed (through crossbreeding) to develop a strain of chickens that could withstand Mombasa’s arid climate. In addition, Rene brought sheep and goats into the area to clean up acreage not under cultivation, and began stocking the land with wild elands, impalas, and daika. (“The latter three animals are mainly leaf-eaters,” Dr. Haller explains, “and I’d like to introduce hippos and buffalo here to eat the grass. We want to find out how much biomass an area can accommodate.”)

Five years ago, when the cement company became uneasy about the ugly scars their limestone excavations had left on Mombasa’s scenic north coast, Rene was given a further assignment. He was asked to beautify the area in an economically productive way.

  • Published on Jan 1, 1977
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