Verdict: FMNR is an inexpensive way for farmers to make improvements with the resources they already have, increasing millet harvests from 430kg to 750kg a hectare, and saving money on fertilisers, with restored trees producing leaf litter (forming humus) and giving shade to livestock (for manure).
It can help solve a myriad of problems by providing affordable toilets in water-scarce areas, and returning compost rich in beneficial microorganisms, as well as ample quantities of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to depleted soils, reclaiming nutrients to make organic soil conditioners and fertilisers.
We also asked about other uses of fossil fuels alongside energy generation, among them the production of fertilisers, plastics and steel.
"We import all the seeds, most of the pesticides and elements for fertilisers, we import all of the equipment and we import the generators," said Lebedev, sipping a latte in an upmarket Moscow restaurant.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, most imports of food, fuel, tractors, fertilisers and pesticides were cut off.
Energy, fertilisers, plastics and steel are basics of everyday life.
Cuba will be able to import chemical fertilisers, pesticides and fuel for tractors; foreign investors will want to buy profitable farmland, and urban land may become too valuable for mere gardening.
"Barefoot" agronomists, just graduated, worked in rural cooperatives to invent organic fertilisers and pesticides.
Instead of chemical fertilisers, they apply compost from the wastes of rice, beans, bananas and sweetcorn.
Cuban agriculture has now become a world-class laboratory for non-chemical fertilisers and pesti cides, farming in small units with highly motivated producers, and growing food in and around cities. Traditional practices, such as the use of compost castings made by red worms fed on a diet of kitchen scraps, were revived and refined.
They have been pouring money not only into steelmaking but all manner of energy-intensive industries, from plastics to fertilisers.
