Tony Rinaudo got this nickname from his years of outstanding work in one of the world’s poorest regions.
Over three decades the Italo-Australian agronomist has reforested 6 million hectares, an area as large as northern Italy.
Rinaudo recently became a Member of the Order of Australia during this year’s Australia Day honours.
The recognition comes just months after he received the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, which serves to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today.
Rinaudo received the award for the largest positive environmental transformation in all of Africa, with his revolutionary Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) method.
A gentle and kind man, Rinaudo welcomed us at the headquarters of World Vision, where he holds the title of Principal Advisor of Natural Resources, Food Security and Climate Change.
Rinaudo’s inspirational story begins in the 1960s, when he was a young boy living in the regional district of Ovens Valley, in north-eastern Victoria.
Growing up in this verdant and mountainous area exposed Rinaudo to the severe impact certain agricultural practices can have on the environment.
“In Myrtleford, they were growing tobacco and spraying DDT and other chemicals from airplanes,” he recalled.
“The spray would go into the rivers and kill the fish.”
This is just one example of environmental destruction occurring in the area at the time.
A young Rinaudo was both outraged at these injustices and upset that he didn’t know how to combat them.
In these moments, he turned to his faith in order to find the answers.
“I prayed to God and asked Him to use me somehow, somewhere, to make a difference,” he said.
One thing led to another, and Rinaudo eventually studied agriculture at the University of New England, where he met Liz, the woman he’d go on to marry.
“She was a nice girl who had a similar vision and desire to do that kind of work,” Rinaudo said of his wife.
“She told me she was studying agriculture because she had her own sense of calling… she said she believed God was calling her to Africa to be a missionary.”
Tony and Liz first left for Africa with their six-month-old baby in tow; they were headed for Niger to work with international, interdenominational Evangelical Christian mission organisation.
Niger is located in West Africa, and the Sahara Desert - which is uninhabitable - takes up two-thirds of the nation.
The remaining third is characterised by the banks of the Niger River and savannahs where it’s possible to breed livestock and practise subsistence farming.
In terms of climate, it’s one of the hottest places in the world, with the average temperature pushing well above 30˚C.
The first year of Rinaudo’s mission was a total fiasco.
He had begun by growing crops and teaching local farmers traditional techniques.
However, the results were far from impressive and it soon became clear he’d need to find a new strategy.
Furthermore, deforestation and desertification weren’t the only issues threatening the rural villages’ survival.
In some ways, locals were a threat to themselves: in some villages, residents had cleared dry tree roots to use them for firewood.
But why are trees so important in this area?
The answer is simple yet surprising.
Firstly, in extremely hot countries like Niger, trees create shade, reducing the soil’s temperature by around 35˚C, which in turns allows seeds to germinate.
They also serve as a barrier against the wind, which would otherwise bury the seeds in sand.
In developing countries, products like fertiliser and animal manure are considered a luxury; therefore, the underground release of nitrogen from tree roots is a crucial step in the rejuvenation process.
Finally, some trees have the ability to extract water from deep in the soil, releasing it near the surface at night and biologically irrigating the surrounding crops.
Returning to Niger, Rinaudo admits that after the first year, he felt completely lost “in the middle of that immense expanse of sand”.
The FMNR method was born out of a vision in the desert of Niger… and more specifically, out of a man and his faith.
Before and after shots of a mountainous area in Ethiopia, where the FMRN method was implemented. The photo on the left was taken in 2002, and the one on the right in 2007.
“I was letting down the air pressure in my tyres and I was looking in every direction but all I could see was barren landscape,” he recalled.
“Then I noticed this bush and walked over closer to have a look.
“I realised that it wasn’t a bush, it was a tree… in that moment everything changed.
“Everything we needed was right there at our feet.”
This is how Rinaudo discovered the richness of the deep soil profile, where tree roots are still alive, but where the new branches are often cut off by famers to make more room in the hope of increasing harvests, or to use as firewood, without realising the tree is still alive.
Rinaudo discovered that if the roots were preserved and treated properly, new trees could quickly be grown.
He describes it as an “underground forest”, made up of roots that just need to be protected and looked after.
Rinaudo soon began to perfect the FMNR method, which is based on simple and logical principles: to help farmers regenerate arid land by using what’s already there.
However, convincing locals to use his technique wasn’t an easy task: only 10 farmers agreed to raise the trees instead of clearing them.
Rinaudo made it clear that farmers would have the last say and at any time, they could change their minds and do what they wanted with their land, including cutting down the trees.
With the famine of 1984, many more farmers were convinced to participate in the experiment.
Degraded crops became more productive and fertile, while pastures for livestock improved.
The result was astounding: 1800 tonnes of grain fed around 30,000 people in Africa that year.
The next step for Rinaudo was to spread the FMNR to other countries, including Somalia, East Timor, Indonesia, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia.
Thanks to this method, 200 million trees have grown over 5 million hectares since 1980, contributing to the production of 500,000 tonnes of grain a year.
The most interesting detail is that it only costs farmers next to nothing to start investing – all they need is a pair of cutters to prune stems from sprouting tree stumps so that new shoots can grow.
“The solutions to the problems of this world are embarrassingly simple”, Rinaudo said, quoting Bill Mollison, the “father of permaculture”.
With the FMNR method, it’s more a case of looking at what not to do, rather than what to do… and the answer was as easy as not clearing trees that already exist.
Rinaudo, his wife and their three children left Niger in 1999, the year in which the agronomist began working with World Vision on his next mission: defending his groundbreaking reforestation method.
