Repurposing the scars of war for good.
From Edible Geography...
The impact of military manoeuvres on the agricultural landscape is [almost always] not positive. Bombs, mines, and other explosive munitions carve new three-dimensional spaces into the landscape, digging holes in perfectly graded fields and demolishing buildings in densely packed cities.
In Europe, some still exist, either as deliberately preserved holes in the ground or as ad-hoc ponds (which, in turn, have formed inadvertent aquatic nature reserves).
[In Vietnam] bomb craters are favored sites for houses, with a replenishable source of protein at the doorstep. These relics have become part of the agrarian landscape, transformed from a symbol of death into one of life.
Locals in Xiengkhouang Province [Laos] eat a lot of swallows, which they net when the birds fly into the dry bomb craters for a dust-bath. They also use bomb casings to “support rice granaries, form fences, and make pig-troughs and planter-boxes.”
One of the craters was turned into a kidney-shaped swimming pool by the future President of Laos.
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