Giving Compass' Take:

• Global Citizen profiles Australian environmentalist Tony Rinaudo, who is using farmer-managed natural regeneration to restore forests in West Africa and guard against food insecurity.

• What might other agriculture specialists learn from Rinaudo's example? How can we harness the power of nature to create sustainable solutions to intractable problems?

• Here are ways that agroforestry is improving farming practices.

Some people plant trees in their backyards, while others pitch in to bring new trees to parks. Tony Rinaudo, on the other hand, has spearheaded the growth of 240 million trees across dozens of countries, according to the Guardian.

The “Forest Maker,” as he calls himself in a memoir, first arrived in Niger from Australia 30 years ago and tried to restore the ravaged landscape by planting as many trees as humanly possible.

After two years, he made little progress and began to reassess his purpose. That’s when he realized that rather than trying to cultivate sky-scraping trees, he could work with the harsh terrain to develop trees that thrived underground by regularly pruning branches and protecting the trunks when fields are plowed.

“In that moment, everything changed,” he told the Guardian. “We didn’t need to plant trees, it wasn’t a question of having a multi-million dollar budget and years to do it, everything you needed was in the ground.”

“Nature would heal itself, you just needed to stop hammering it,” he added.

Read the full article about Tony Rinaudo's effort to restore 240 million trees in West Africa by Joe McCarthy and Erica Sanchez at Global Citizen.