ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND PROTECTION PROGRAMME
SHUMAS strives to alleviate poverty and improve the standard of living of marginalized rural communities without compromising the capacity of future generations to meet their own needs. We seek to help people meet their needs today without compromising their future needs.
Farming is the backbone of Cameroon, and farmers are about 80% of the population. 90% of these farmers are small-scale subsistence farmers. Previously practising shifting cultivation, when the land was no longer fertile, they would allow it to fallow and, after some years, they would return. Due to population pressure, poverty, lack of technical know-how and poor agricultural practices, most farms have been over worked for many years and, with no possibility of nomadic cultivation, good farming land has been drastically reduced.
SHUMAS, via its other projects, has become very aware of this situation and is working to:
- Encourage organic farming methods
- Promote agro-forestry activities through training, support, maintenance and provision of nitrogen fixing tree species to different farmers,
- Protect village water catchments and teach management skills,
- Promote soil degradation and erosion control methods,
- Encourage sustainable afforestation and reforestation. - especially tree planting exercise and the provision of wells in the northern Sahelian region of Cameroon.
Environmental Education
A Schools Environment Project is scheduled for 2008; studies and partner agreements have already been completed and the educational material is nearly ready.
Five schools will initially be involved and we hope to encourage children to become aware of environmental issues and to show how sustainable activities can create positive local and global differences. The project will introduce practical lesson plans involving seed selection and propagation, basic organic farming techniques and create school vegetable gardens from which extra produce can be sold to help fund additional teaching staff.
Children will also learn about agro-forestry and the medicinal properties of tree species and their practical use in carpentry and building construction.
ORGANIC FARMING
With farmers working more than ten hours per day in scorching sunshine or continuous rainfall for less and less output, they soon find themselves and their families held down by starvation just a few months after harvest.
Their produce is nowadays insufficient to feed the family all year round whereas before they had sufficient food all year with a surplus for sale to help pay school fees for the kids.
One option is to purchase chemical fertilizers. However, these are not only potentially environmentally harmful, but companies monopolize the market charging prices quite unaffordable by poor farmers.
SHUMAS, as a short-term measure, has embarked on
training many of her target groups to practise organic farming
using an integrated farming approach. 
This is improving the situation, while easing labour and
protecting the environment, but unfortunately the problem is
far too generalized and needs a more extensive approach. The
organic farming approach is the best alternative as farming
outputs are locally obtained, and are affordable by
everyone.
SHUMAS has recently obtained land, on which to build a proposed 'Integrated Organic Farming & Demonstration Center' enabling many more Cameroonian families to be trained.
This center, though principally targeting the rural masses and farmers in general, we hope, should also serve many researchers, students, volunteers, etc around the globe. The first phase of the project proposal is under studies with one of our project partners. (For details please mail via our contact page.)
AGRO FORESTRY
SHUMAS has nursed hundreds of thousands of
agro-forestry tree species like the acacia, calliandra,
tefrosial, etc while using the nursery for training and has
provided
more than 100000 seedlings free of charge to many families
and groups in the North West Province of Cameroon.
Indiscriminate Eucalyptus planting in the past, often by early missionaries, has resulted in generalized water shortages and drastic fall in crop yields in many rural communities.
Our Eucalyptus Replacement Programme entails nursing of indigenous tree species to replace eucalyptus plantings in water catchment and farming areas.
