BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Hello, I'm Emma Barnett. For most of my career, I've been on live radio, and I love it.

But I've always wondered, what if we'd had more time? How much deeper does the story go?

I remember having this very sharp thought that what you do right now, this is it.

This defines your life.

I'm ready to talk and ready to listen.

I'm insulted by how little the medical community is ever bothered with this.

Ready to talk with me, Emma Barnard, is my new podcast.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

In this program, we're on a journey to the far north of Senegal in West Africa. Look out into the

distance, you'll see mostly desert. Go further north, and you'll arrive in Mauritania and the Sahara.

And yet this is where I've asked a journalist named Jack Thompson to go in search of a story.

On the face of it, a tough assignment because, as you can imagine, it looks like such an unpromising place to find food.

So we've been driving up for five hours from Dacca, the Senegal's capital,

up to San Luis, which is right in the north of Senegal.

Dry, arid terrain, very sandy landscapes, only the occasional herder

riding along with their cattle and their goats and their sheep.

But if you know where to look, and Jack does, there is a food story here.

It's one with growing importance to all of us here in the UK.

And it's connected with water because, as Jack headed further north,

on the horizon appeared a huge river, along with a 40 kilometre lake,

at a network of canals.

...