The director of Songhai Center was in Toulouse (France) where he took part in a colloquium on «Rameal Chipped Wood » from 16^th to 18^th June 2010. This meeting helped the participants grasp the importance of the RCW in agriculture being practiced in Canada a long time ago before it began to become popular recently in France. It is a farming method which consists in chopping fresh tree branches (into pieces of less than 7 cm of diameter) and leaving them on the soil to improve its fertility or help it regenerate entirely.  

The RCW is then a natural manure for the soil. It has many advantages: no need to add any other fertilizer to the soil, little or no need in water supply, use of biocides and phytosanitary treatment as well as ploughing process to the soil. The RCW is a soil fertility increasing technique applied in the 80’s by a group of Canadian researchers led by Professor Gilles Lemieux from the University of Laval in Quebec. It is now practiced in many countries on both unfertile and fertile soils with amazing results. The technique is under experimentation in Songhaï.