Recreating living soil
Thirty years ago it all started with herbicide-based Zero Tillage (ZT) for grain crops like maize and soybean. Gradually, a much broader and ecologically sound approach evolved, which is being now called Conservation Agriculture (CA).
CA is based on reduced or no tillage, direct seeding and crop rotation. The soil is covered with a mulch layer of crop residue, green manure or cover crop, and herbicides or mechanical or natural methods for weed control are used when required.
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4 - 5written by ILEIA editorial teamThirty years ago it all started with herbicide-based Zero Tillage (ZT) for grain crops like maize and soybean. Gradually, a much broader and ecologically sound approach evolved, which is being now called Conservation Agriculture (CA). CA is based on reduced or no tillage, direct seeding and crop rotation. The soil is covered with a mulch layer of crop residue, green manure or cover crop, and herbicides or mechanical or natural methods for weed control are used when required.
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6 - 9Tillage is one of the main causes of soil degradation and low yields. Conservation Agriculture (CA): zero tillage, direct seeding, mulching, green manure/ cover crop production and crop rotation, with or without the use of herbicides, has become an enormous success in the USA, Australia and Latin America in the past decade. It is now being introduced in Africa and Central, South and Southeast Asia with promising results. The articles on Conservation Agriculture (p.6-15) discuss the concepts of and experiences with this approach in Latin America and Africa.
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10 - 11written by Ian Cherrett , Luis Alvarez WelchesIn the department of Lempira, one of the poorest and most isolated regions of Honduras, small farmers cultiuvate their land on hilly terrain, 200 to 900 meters above sea level. Supported by the Lempira Sur collaborative project initiated by FAO, a massive shift to a new production system has takesplace over the last ten years. This system is called Quesungual after the village where it was first developed. It is Conservation Agriculture system with a tree component which allows small farmers to cultivate their land on steep slopes continuously while regenerating it.
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11 - 12written by Marcos Vieira , Jan Van WambekeDuring a diagnostic appraisal that was held in the area of Guaymango, in El Salvador, three major problems were identified: high poverty levels, food insecurity and recurrent health problems in the community. Based on this, an intensive programme was launched by the Ministry of Agriculture and several private and public institutions to increase maize and sorghum productivity and to improve soil conservation practices. The promotion of these practices was the starting point of a new phase in land management in the area, based on conservation tillage.
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13 - 14Many traditional farming systems in Africa have characteristics closely resembling Conservation Agriculture systems. Fior example, tillage is often limited to planting in holes, or mulching is practised using weeds, crop residues, grasses or green manure. Although there is much potential for the adoption of CA systems in Africa, there are also many issues that affect the feasibility of its introduction and how its principles can be translated into location-specific, agricultural production systems.
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15 - 15written by Henk BremanThe use of inorganic fertilisers as per standard recommendations is not profitable to many small farmers. By following an Integrated Soil Fertility Management Approach (ISFM): integrating inorganic fertilisers and organic amendments and other ecological ways to increase soil fertility, the efficiency and hence profitability of inorganic fertilisers can be improved. Experiences in West Africa and Nepal (p. 20) demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach if developed in a participatory way.
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16 - 17written by Joost Brouwer , Roelf VoortmanOne of the most striking aspects of crop growth in the Sahel is its extreme variability. In one part of the field the millet or groundnuts may be lush and dark green, while only a few meters away hardly anything may grow at all. We report here on a combined on-farm and on-station research programme at ICRISAT Sahelian Centre near Niamey, Niger, that focused on soil and crop growth variability.
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18 - 19The Farmer Field School experiential learning and self help development approach has become very successful in Southeast Asia. In 1999, the FAO Global IPM Facility launched an East African sub-regional pilot project for farmer field schools on Integrated Production and Pest Management (IPPM) in three districts of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to adapt the FFS approach to the East African context. This article reports the experiences of the field coordinators of this programme.
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20 - 21Farmers in the hills of Nepal have, over the past centuries, developed complex farming systems based on a close integration of crop, livestock and forestry/grassland management. This paper summarises the work and experiences of many persons and organisations, mainly related to the Sustainable Soil Management Programme, SSMP, Department of Agriculture, Nepal.
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22 - 23written by Ambarwati D. Rahayu , Rik ThijssenIn mountainous Indonesia, soil and water conservation is an obvious precondition for sustainable agriculture. When the partners of the international development organisation VECO start a nre agricultural programme with rural communities, soil and water conservation is generally a good starting point. It is convenient, however, to learn from local insights and from ethnobotanical surveys as to how can difficult issues be tackled.
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24 - 29written by Norman Uphoff , Erick FernandesThe System of Rice Intensification, developed by small farmers in Madagascar, is spreading fast. The first International Conference on SRI took place in Sanya, China, in April 2002. Based on the experiences from 17 countries presented at this conference, the authors have written a 'state of the art' on SRI for LEISA Magazine. The article shows the impressive potential of this ecological approach, irrespective of the use of hybrid or traditional varieties, and discusses best practices. It also shows the creative power of farmer innovation to adapt promising technologies to local conditions.
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36 - 36written by Gowtham ShankarIDEA is working with tribal people in the northern Ghats in India. During documentation of tribal indigenous knowledge they found that social spiders were used to control stem borers in paddy. This practice, which was still known only to a few families, has now been disseminated to many farmers in the region who are now using Bulu also for pest control in other crops. This is just one of the many indigenous pest management practices documented and shared by IDEA. The tribal farmers in the region invite the readers of LEISA Magazine to exchange experiences with them.
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