FIRE AND RAIN IN NZARA

We’re having an excellent rainy season here in Nzara, South Sudan, so we’ve been busy planting teak, coffee, vanilla, and several other crops we’re trialling. This is in stark contrast to the start of the year when temperatures reached 50°C and forest fires whipped through Western Equatoria State. Although our more mature teak is largely unaffected, it is still a horrifying sight (picture below) and keeping the fires under control absorbs a lot of our time and effort.

I’m delighted to report our first coffee outgrower (pictured above), recruited as part of the “Excelling in Excelsa” project, successfully planted her first seedlings from our new nursery. There has been great uptake by the local community for this project and we are well on our way to reaching 1,000 smallholder growers within the next couple of years.

We are focusing our teak planting on degraded parts of our concession areas to ensure we qualify as much of it as possible for carbon credits. We have begun the Project Design process which should lead to us generating the first credits next year. We are also enriching buffer and riparian zones with indigenous trees to promote biodiversity and create corridors for animal movement. We’re on track to plant 200 hectares of trees this year and reboot 150 ha, which is taking us towards our target of managing a 5,000 ha teak plantation within 6 years.