Agriculture: A Way of Building Relationships
1500 cows will be treated with quality medicines that are
given free of charge, through a company called Zoetis. They are the biggest
veterinary company in the world today and they have donated these to us. They also
sent us vet doctors from Jos Teaching Hospital, from National Veterinary Research
Institute, Vom. These veterinary doctors are working each day in these places
with our neighbors.
This has been on our hearts for the last two years when we
were walking around our area here. One day, my wife and I met with a Fulani man
with his cattle. He was saying that many of their cows are dying and they don't
have reliable medicines. They use their money for medicines that are not
effective. They were asking about accessing reliable medicines. Then, we had a
friend in Australia who is a veterinary doctor and she connected us with Zoetis.
And over the last two years, my wife, Ruth has been working with Zoetis to get
to the point where we can have this this week's veterinary clinics in these
five different areas. Not only is it treating cattle this this veterinary
clinic this week, but also showing the people how to access these reliable
medicines so that they can have them in the future.
We're really happy about this because, as we've said before
in different publications of CFM, our land that we bought here, over 30 acres
is very poor in terms of farming fertility. When we bought the land out, the
locals we bought it from said we should not to bother trying to farm this land
that we wouldn't get anything from it. And it was true, we sowed seed on one of
our main fields here and got nothing in return even after spending money on
chemical fertilizers. So we invited the Fulani Cattle, as I've said before,
they stayed for two months at night, with the aid of their urine, it greatly
increased our fertility, we had a very good harvest the following year at near
zero cost us even mushrooms are growing out of the soil, which shows that the
soil is coming back to life again.
When soil gets infertile, it gets very hard when it rains.
The water just runs off the top of it, washes the top soil away causing
erosion. These are terrible impacts upon our farming soils. Also, when we burn the
farms and grass after harvest, the wind carries away the ash and leaves the
soil uncovered. This makes it very vulnerable to hardening and to erosion. It's
not possible for fungi to grow in size like this, and that shows the poverty of
the soils. We've seen these in many places. We have mission stations in many
areas and these are being reported by our pastors in mission stations in
different locations.
This, however contributes to violence because chemical
fertilizers means that we farm on our own. We become little social monopolies
in the sense that we don't develop relationships with others. We become our own
gods and we say we don't need anyone else. That's a very bad situation because
if we're neglecting relationships with our neighbors, these relationships
deteriorate after a while misunderstanding come in, poor responses to
difficulties in relationships begin to take over.
And it isn't the way God made us to be at all. So this sort
of system of chemical fertilizers that teaches us to be independent, is wrong
and what we need and not only that, but these chemical fertilizers kill our
soils. And bring in poverty, as I said,
Our country has no hope in this situation, as we've said in
previous videos, that the national flag of Nigeria is green, white, and green.
This flag is wonderful, it shows that good agriculture is the backbone of any
nation and it's also the backbone of peace. And so, we have to hand on to our
children, fertile soils, and good relationships with our neighbors, which bring
us agricultural prosperity, economic development in rural and local areas, and
this is what brings peace.
One of the reasons we're doing these Veterinary Clinics is
to build relationships with Fulanis is we call it farming together. And that is
because we don't want to farm on our own anymore. It's not profitable and it's
very bad for relationships. We have to have biodiversity, it means animal life,
integrating with soil life, and the animals and the soils together, build a
richness of biodiversity, which brings life back to our soils. It also cuts our
expenses tremendously. Once we build up our soils and make them rich again, we
don't need to be spending all money to buy chemicals, it’s totally unnecessary.
The soil becomes a golden goose, or is it the goose that lays the golden egg.
Agriculture is fundamental to the scriptures. Ecosystems,
biodiversity, agricultural sustainability, the recovery of our land of a planet
of our creation, are all fundamental to theology. This is theology because God
wants us to have peace. We have been neglecting these things as preachers are
just going about individual prosperity and individualism and our own dreams and
wishes and so on. We haven't preached those things that build community and
build future for our children as the scriptures major on these issues.
So the farming together – the welfare of the Fulani cattle
is our welfare. And if those cows get sick, it matters to me. Like Paul said,
if one part of the body is sick, the whole body is sick.
Farming together is what we need to do. We need to go back
to those things we used to do here in Nigeria, the wisdom of our fathers, and
relearn that they knew what they were doing. They built the relationships to
build the fertility of their farms and the prosperity of the whole community.
That's how it works. That's how creation is meant to be. And to say that we can
throw out those relationships and replace them with technocrats and modern
chemical forms of farming and just give money overseas to these producers is
entirely wrong. Let's go back to the wisdom of our fathers, rediscover our
herbs and so on. We have Herbs that are incredibly beneficial to our health. We
need to get that back because it's wealth and rebuild those things that we have
allowed to be destroyed in recent decades. We've got to do for our future and for
our families.
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