Category Archives: Agricultural techniques

Africa is not spending enough on food

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This piece was posted by Hilde Faugli, Communications Intern at Find Your Feet. 

70 percent of people in Africa live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for food and income

While most talk about Africa these days centers on the World Cup in South Africa, sobering facts about the continent’s food situation have been presented in an International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI) paper entitled Public Spending for Agriculture in Africa: Trends and Composition. According to the paper insufficient spending on agriculture Africa means that the continent is “now facing the same type of long-term food deficit problem that India faced in the early 1960s.

 
70 percent of people in Africa live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for food and income. Spending money on food production is therefore critical. Regrettably, only eight African countries have reached the target adopted by the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in 2003. Back then, the continent committed to allocating 10 percent of their budgets to agriculture. The countries to reach the 10 percent target are Niger, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, Senegal, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

 As a result of the inadequate investment in the African agriculture sector, the continent is vulnerable to frequent food crises and countries are dependent on emergency food aid and food imports. The paper argues that governments and donors in the past have devoted more resources to emergency aid than to long-term agricultural development, which further undermines the countries’ ability to generate economic and agricultural growth. “Consequently, poverty and hunger have persisted and threaten the likelihood that some countries will meet the MDGs”.  The authors recommend increased investment in what they call the prime movers – human capital, technology and institutional innovations – to increase farm production and accelerate agricultural growth. As climate change is likely to have an adverse effect on the continents food production, increased government spending will probably prove even more important in the future.

Meanwhile, donor funding for agriculture in Africa has dropped dramatically – from 15 percent in the 1980s to 4 percent in 2006- but the amount countries allocate from aid to food production also varies quite considerably. In 2007 Botswana and Nigeria spent less than 1 percent of all aid received on agriculture while Burkina Faso in 2006 spent 8 percent of its total aid on agriculture.

To be able to improve their food deficit, and stand strong against climate change, African countries will need to spend more of their budgets on developing their agricultural sector. However, just as important is that the agriculture is developed in a sustainable manner. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), increasing use of chemical fertilizers and intense industrialized agriculture are, by some actors, seen as the solution to the food crisis.  This approach to agriculture brings with it not only possible health risks, it is also likely to lead to a loss of biological biodiversity.

It is important to remember that this type of agriculture is not the only way to go. In Malawi, a return to age-old, chemical-free farming techniques is improving crop harvests for many poor farmers. Agriculture is the life blood of many small communities, and should be supported accordingly. The conservation of biological diversity that sustains agriculture is essential, and should be put at the heart of any national or local strategies to improve food security. Read more about Find Your Feet’s approach to agriculture.

Download the paper Public Spending for Agriculture in Africa: Trends and Composition.

And if you’d like to read about a global campaign to promote More and Better aid to agriculture, click here.

Sustainable agriculture and conservation of biodiversity will prove important in improving food production in Africa.

World People’s Conference on Climate Change

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This piece was posted by FYF Communications Intern Tahsina Rumman Khan.

I was glad to see that, at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba last week, the focus was finally being placed on listening to the voices of the poor.

After the deep disappointment of the Copenhagen Climate Summit which failed to delineate adequate policies for addressing some of the worst effects of climate change, and which was, arguably, merely a rich man’s club and a chance to burn air miles, last week’s conference and its wider movement comes at a welcome point in time.

For the 65% of people in sub-Saharan Africa who rely on agriculture to feed their families, issues relating to climate change and food security are critical in deciding what lies in store for them over the coming years.  

The World People’s Conference acknowledged the effects of agribusiness on climate change, and assessed all the methods and procedures used in agribusiness, underlining the need to respect Mother Earth and its resources. The ideas and visions came from the people themselves, illustrating the stark contrast to the top-down approach used by the UN Climate talks.

Visit the World People’s Conference website to read more.

Business as usual is not an option

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As the UK election is approaching, Find Your Feet is one of the 188 organisations that joined the Vote Global manifesto.

One of the key demands in the Vote Global manifesto is that the UK government support the poorest countries to adapt to and mitigate against climate change, ensuring that this funding is additional to official development assistance. 

Poor people living in rural areas, who depend on farming to feed their families, are already suffering the effects of climate change. Their crops are failing more frequently, meaning that they are seriously struggling to grow enough to survive.

In the wake of the World Food Crisis, over the past couple of years debates have raged as to how we can best feed the world.  A 2007 intergovernmental report, co-sponsored by 7 UN agencies including the Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Health Organisation and World Bank suggested that a ‘business as usual’ approach to agriculture was not sufficient. However there is little evidence that different approaches to agriculture are seriously being considered.

The approaches I am talking about are, in fact, centuries old. Early farming systems were characterised by diversity – depending on a wide range of plants and animals for food. In fact there is still there is successful farming going on in many countries that makes good use of polycultures; land husbandry practices such as crop and field rotation, composting and use of legumes; and of ‘traditional’ varieties of seed bred for resilience across a range of conditions. This agricultural approach, which is broadly termed ‘agroecology’ is productive, resilient in the face of environmental shocks, and less dependent on fossil fuels; it also offers consumers a source of good quality healthy food and offers farmers fulfilment as valued members of a community.

Whilst the industrial agricultural approaches regarded as exemplary in the twentieth century have reduced the drudgery of agriculture, and in many cases increased production, there have also been great environmental costs. Industrial agriculture, which is characterised by the use of non-renewable resources that deplete the environment, constitutes our recent past. It cannot, however, be our future.

Agroecology challenges us to move beyond the narrow focus of ‘Green Revolution’-type approaches that privilege production over all other criteria, to a more coherent, sustainable, vision for the future. It is both conservative when it comes to the potential over utilisation of environmental resources and radical in its protection of the rights of small family farmers and its promotion of a new paradigm for agriculture – one that recognises the interconnections between food, farm, family and notions of a just society, not just ever increasing production.

At this election we would like to see a real recognition of the fact that, in the light of the pressures of climate change, ‘business as usual is not an option.’ In considering how we are going to support the poorest countries to adapt to and mitigate against climate change there needs to be space for a serious consideration of how exactly this ‘additional’ funding will be used.

Dr. Dan Taylor is Director of Find Your Feet

Agriculture in Zimbabwe

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This piece was posted by Betty, Programmes Officer, FYF UK Office

Small scale Zimbabwean farmer

The future of farming in Zimbabwe?

On Thursday 18th March I attended a lecture by Ian Scoones of the Institute of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Ian’s subject was “New land, new livelihoods: agrarian change in Zimbabwe following land reform.”

I was interested to find out the current situation in Zimbabwe as FYF is involved in a planning exercise with several Zimbabwe NGOs with a view to supporting them in the near future.

Land reform commenced in 1979 with the signing of the Lancaster House agreement and was intended to redistribute land from the minority white to the majority black population. Before this, white people, who formed less than 1% of the population, owned over 70% of the arable land, including the best. Their subsequent eviction has been blamed for famine which left two-thirds of the population of Zimbabwe facing severe food shortages (Wikipedia).

Ian Scoones has conducted detailed research in Masvingo in the south-east of Zimbabwe which challenges a number of myths about the situation in Zimbabwe and found a much more complex and to a certain extent more optimistic situation than is usually portrayed. He agreed that is has been a tough decade with variable rainfall, a decline in GDP per capita, rampant inflation and a reduction in inputs to agriculture. But he challenged the view that agriculture has completely collapsed. What he found was that there had been a massive shift from large scale to small scale production, leading to a reduction in the amounts of the high value crops associated with exports such as wheat, tobacco, tea and coffee. There had been a corresponding increase in crops for consumption, figures for which are often not included in official statistics.

Farmers demonstrate the methods they have used

Demonstrating small-scale farmer innovation

He dispelled another myth – that there has been no investment in agriculture in Zimbabwe in the last decade. In fact he found that investment has averaged $2,000 per household, with some farmers accumulating cattle. This is a good hedge against inflation.

Although there were a significant number of workers displaced from the big estates around Harare, Ian has also found that there has been significant generation of agricultural work, although much of it is temporary, poorly paid and female.

Ian believes that there is great economic potential in agriculture in Zimbabwe, but that a major rethink is required among both policy makers and donors, to shift the policy discourse from the assumptions rooted in the colonial era to the current situation.

FYF’s participatory approach will enable us take up this challenge. Through our participatory planning process we aim to design a project that both draws on the skills and the knowledge that people already have and that responds to the needs they identify. As a result our work will make a lasting difference to their lives.

To read more the fact that we are returning to work in Zimbabwe please visit our website.

Let farmers choose

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This piece was posted by Betty, Programmes Officer, FYF UK Office

Can we both intensify agriculture and preserve ecosystems?

Yesterday evening I attended a lecture on farming and sustainable environments at the Royal Geographical Society.

It was the first of two lectures organised by the Earthwatch Institute – the second will be on the subject of forests and climate change.

The Institute conducts research around the world to understand environmental challenges and find solutions that will conserve the diversity and integrity of life on earth. They work with volunteers, many of whom are from their corporate sponsors, encouraging them to leave their blackberries aside for a few days while they go outside and get their hands dirty. The idea behind this is to inspire them to take action in the workplace or community to promote sustainability and environmental awareness.

Increase profit at the expense of biodiversity?

The event was chaired by “Countryfile” presenter, Julia Bradbury and featured the research of Professor Ken Norris of the University of Reading and Dr Mark Chandler from Earthwatch. Julia Bradbury quoted David Attenborough, who recently said that there are now three times as many people in the world as there were when he made his first broadcast in 1952.  The billing for the event asked whether it was possible to reconcile the conflict between intensifying agriculture (in the context of the pressures on farmers to produce more food as population increases and climate change forces land use patterns to change) and conserving precious ecosystems.

I was interested to see whether the speakers would unpick the assumption that agriculture must be intensified or whether there are alternative approaches to feeding a growing population.

Short term profit = long-term loss

Will marginalised farmers benefit from payment for ecosystem services?

Will marginalised farmers benefit from payments for ecosystem services?

Professor Norris discussed his cocoa biodiversity project in Ghana, explaining three models of producing cocoa – a forest system which included cocoa bushes, traditional shaded agriculture where a large number of trees were preserved giving shade to the cocoa bushes and more intensive farming with few trees remaining. Whilst the latter stage gives increases yields and profit there is a decrease in biodiversity and the amount of carbon stored. And over the long term intensive cocoa farming reduces the nutrient content of the soil resulting in a decline in yields. As a consequence, land that had formerly been used to produce cocoa had become so unproductive that it had been abandoned.

Professor Norris discussed payments for ecosystem services as an approach that would both help preserve ecosystems and benefit poor farmers.

Whilst the reduction of poverty among the poorest farmers and the preservation of ecosystems are both issues that drive our work at FYF it remains to be seen how such a system would measure the carbon and biodiversity that a farmer is responsible for preserving. It is also unclear how the marginalised, often illiterate and largely women farmers we work with would benefit from schemes such as these.

The effects of fertilizer

Dr Chandler discussed how to produce the much sought after coffee from the Tarrazu region of Costa Rica while maintaining a healthy ecosystem.

Farmers here are reporting declining yields and increasing costs leading to falling incomes while soil erosion and landslides are on the increase. As well as decreasing yields in the long term through acidification of the soil, which reduces the nutrients available, excessive application of fertiliser has polluted water sources. Dr Chandler recommends that farmers decrease their use of synthetic fertiliser and replace it with organic fertiliser. His research is finding that this leads to a decrease in acidity of the soil and an increase in productivity.

This is very much in line with FYF’s approach although our farmers have not experienced the problems of excessive fertiliser use that he reported as this is beyond their means.

Dr Chandler was asked how farmers react to this advice and he replied that he convinces them by showing them the results of the soil analysis as evidence of the damage of long-term use of synthetic fertilisers.

Letting farmers choose for themselves

Letting farmers choose for themselves.

This contrasts with the approach used by Lomadef, one of our partners in Malawi.

Project Officer, Henderson, recently told me that Lomadef demonstrate as many different approaches as possible on their organic training farm and let the farmers choose for themselves which ones, if any, they will adopt.

Their Director, Mr Kanjanga said that they don’t try to persuade the farmers they work with to do anything different. But when they see the results obtained by farmers who have adopted methods learned from Lomadef, they persuade themselves to give it a try! 

It was a fascinating evening, and although the focus was on cash crops rather than subsistence crops, which are our main concern, it confirmed that by using compost rather than synthetic fertilisers, our farmers are improving their yields both in the short term and the long term as well as protecting the environment on which they depend for their livelihoods.

What does Copenhagen mean to me?

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FYF Director Dr Dan Taylor reflects in The Evening Standard online:

We are standing at a crossroads. We look back at a period of food, fuel and finance crises, and forward to an even more uncertain future, overshadowed by the issue of global warming. The need for mitigation and adaptation in the face of long-term uncertainty, together with the need for a transition to a low carbon economy remains upmost in the minds of our political leaders as COP15 approaches.

So what do we want the world to look like in the future? The recurring mantra of business as usual is not an option has become an integral part of this policy discourse. It appears in a number of reports ranging from agriculture through to climate change to the global economy. But what does it mean?

For us at Find Your Feet it means an answer to a very specific question. What will the impact on poor rural families, particularly those dependent on agriculture, be? Globally, already over a million people go hungry, a number that is gradually rising as climatic unpredictability becomes the norm. That the voices of these people need to be heard in corridors of power is clear, but what is less clear is the impact that our uncertain future will have on their lives and livelihoods. Poor farmers mitigate risk in a number of ways: crop diversification, sequential planting, polycultures and mixed farming, some moving off farm to find temporary or even permanent employment. Despite the steady decrease in the global rural population the majority of the global poor are rurally-based and most rural people are dependent on the food they produce.

Given longer term uncertainty we suggest some priority areas for action:

1. Greater investment in agricultural research that links agricultural and the environment – agroecological systems that can sequestrate carbon.
2. Early warning systems to alert farmers to expected climatic variability.
3. More appropriate participatory farmer support
4. Plant breeding for resilience rather than yield
5. Promotion of ‘minor’ crops which are ‘major’ crops in the eyes of the poor
6. Protection for the agricultural markets of the poor
7. Agrarian reform which promotes the rights of smallholder farmers
8. A greater acknowledgement of the role of women in agriculture.
9. Greater awareness of the multifunctionality of agriculture. Agriculture is not just about production, it is also about culture, resource (biodiversity) conservation and livelihoods.

This calls for a new vision for agriculture, one that can produce food, sequestrate carbon, enhance livelihoods and ultimately conserve our planet for posterity. But what can we expect out of Copenhagen? Not much would be our answer. But we hope that the link between agriculture, food security and climate change will not be lost as all attention is focussed on the latter.

Protecting soils to help combat climate change

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This piece was posted by Mahara, Agriculture Coordinator of the FAIR programme in Malawi in response to an article in Alertnet.

I am the Agriculture Coordinator of FAIR Programme in Malawi jointly funded by Find Your Feet(UK), Self Help Africa (UK)and Development Fund of Norway.

Zambia is our neighbour so the weather pattern is similar and the effects of climate change have no significant differences.

FAIR Programme activities are similar with what has been raised in your report and I want to agree by giving examples when it comes to creating water-holding soil basins, reducing tilling and planting trees that help fertilize but let me also add use of manure may help the continent’s small farmers cope up with effects of climate change.

The programme has been promoting sustainable agriculture activities that include agroforestry practices,soil and water conservation, use of manure, small scale irrigation, crop diversification etc. but at the time being I will comment on use of manure on maize planted on ridges and in pits.

For the past three years we have been demonstrating use of manure on maize planted on ridges and pits comparing it with maize treated with inorganic fertiliser (Urea & 23: 21:0). Bokash and Liquid manure has been used for Bassal and Top dressing respectively as analysis of the two has shown that they have higher nutrient content and are lesser labour demanding in making.

During a dry spell, maize applied to inorganic fertliser suffered more moisture stress than maize applied to manure. While maize planted in pits seemed to have not suffered at all.

Maize Pit planting is a technology where maize is planted in pits of 30 cm deep, 45cm apart and 55cm between rows. The pits are filled 20l decomposed manure mixed with sub soil. 5 plants are planted per pit. Same pits can be used for four years. Pits act as basins and coupled with manure(holds water like a sponge)the result is more water conserved for crop use. The soil is not disturbed for the next 4 years or more.

Current average yields realized by smallholder farmers in Malawi ranges 1,400- 2400 kg/ ha for open pollinated maize varieties.(Guide to Agriculture Production; 1994).Yet yield results from 2008/09 Trials and demos where manure only was used on ridges were at 3.8 mt/ ha and where pits were used it almost doubled to 5mt/ ha and 3mt/ ha were recorded where fertiliser only was used on ridges of the same maize variety .

Etlida Luhanga from Rumphi district of the northern part of Malawi was one of the farmers that practiced Pit planting last year. She says because of good results more than 10 farmers have followed her in the technology this year.

So let me agree that technologies that will help less disburbing of the soils while conserving more water and adding organic matter to the soil may help farmers adapt to the effects of climate change.

Reflection on Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution

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Fascinating debate at Times Online about the merits and drawbacks of the Green Revolution.

“For someone of my generation, growing up under postwar food rationing, the idea that food would always be plentiful and cheap seemed about as likely as a portable phone that you could carry around with you.

For many of us the dire predictions of Thomas Malthus were all too credible. Malthus had advanced the dismal theory that human populations would always grow faster than their food supply. It meant you could forget all your grand ideas about progress. Every social advance was destined to be brought to nothing by famine.

The singular achievement of the agronomist Norman Borlaug, who died at the weekend, was to take away this age-old fear, at least for those of us in the rich West”…..

Read more

Trees “vital for food security” in Africa

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Integrating fleshy plants and trees into farming systems can help overcome food security challenges

NAIROBI, 28 August 2009 (IRIN) – Countries tackling food insecurity and climate change adaptation can greatly benefit from agroforestry – integrating fleshy plants and trees into their farming systems, environmental specialists say.

Sub-Saharan Africa has a history of food insecurity brought on by meagre rains, land degradation, declining soil fertility and bad management of resources, among other factors.

“How do we, in a world of more than six billion people, rising to perhaps over nine billion, feed everyone while simultaneously securing the ecosystem services such as forests and wetlands that underpin agriculture, and indeed life itself in the first place?” Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP), posited at the second World Congress on Agroforestry in Nairobi.

“We can empower people – not to wait for others to do something for them – but to take the initiative, one tree at a time,” Steiner said. “Trees are one of nature’s most ingenious answers to many of our problems.”

Agroforestry helps supply fodder, fruit and nuts as well as trees and shrubs that produce gums, resins and valuable medicines.

Steiner said agroforestry may have many roles to play in the new landscape of rewarding countries for their natural or nature-based services.

“Firstly it offers the potential for maximizing sustainable food production in the zones surrounding natural forests while also boosting biodiversity and other ‘natural infrastructure’.

“Secondly, it offers an opportunity for timber production and thus alternative livelihoods to meet perhaps a supply gap that may emerge under a fully-fledged REDD [Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation] regime.

“Thirdly these agroforestry areas can also potentially secure flows from carbon finance in their own right.”

Better REDD

REDD is a strategy to help local communities conserve forests, including funding these efforts through governments and market-based mechanisms, such as trading the carbon stored by forests as credits to greenhouse gas-emitting industries.

Trees such as the Faidherbia albida, a leguminous acacia-like tree, are especially useful.

“Faidherbia goes dormant at the beginning of the rains and deposits abundant quantities of organic fertilizer on to the food crops to provide nutrients and increase yields, totally free of charge,” said Dennis Garrity, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) Director-General. “They are fertilizer factories in the food crop fields.”

The leaves and pods of the Faidherbia, which are adapted to a wide array of climates and soils from deserts to humid tropics, provide fodder in the dry season too.

Garrity said: “The much higher food prices… have exacerbated the pain of hunger in hundreds of millions of households. The standard solutions just aren’t working. The question is, what are we as agroforestry scientists going to do about it? What are we going to contribute to sustainable solutions?”

With shrinking forests, he said, “the rising demand for tree products will have to be met from farm-grown sources. Clearly, agroforestry science has much to offer in overcoming the food security challenges in Africa, and elsewhere in the world.”

Tree cover

According to a 24 August report by ICRAF, “tree cover is a common feature on agricultural land”, and represents over one billion hectares of land.

“Agroforestry, if defined by tree cover of greater than 10 percent on agricultural land, is widespread, found on 46 percent of all agricultural land area globally, and affecting 30 percent of rural populations,” stated the report.

Namanga Ngongi, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), said: “Seventy-five percent of Africa’s farm lands are degraded, and deforestation is taking place at four times the global average, destroying 1 percent of our forests every year.”

Agroforestry alone could remove 50 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the next 50 years, meeting about a third of the world’s total carbon reduction challenge, according to ICRAF studies.

Carbon payback

Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai suggested that subsistence farmers might be more willing to invest in farming trees if there were carbon credit revenue guarantees.

UNEP recently launched a Carbon Benefits Project in the catchments of Lake Victoria, Niger, Nigeria and China, which seeks to find a standardized way of assessing how much carbon is actually locked away in vegetation and in soils under different land-management regimes.

This has been a major challenge for African smallholders seeking to access the carbon market. Preliminary findings are expected within 18 months.

According to Steiner, economic incentives are required to reverse deforestation and forest degradation.

“…Simply locking away forests to secure their carbon as if they are the Queen’s jewels, or putting up the modern equivalent of a Berlin Wall between forests and people, is almost certainly folly and almost certainly a recipe for disaster,” he said.

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Composting methods

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“Growing concerns relating to land degradation, threat to eco-systems from over and
inappropriate use of inorganic fertilizers, atmospheric pollution, soil health, soil biodiversity
and sanitation have rekindled the global interest in organic recycling practices like
composting.” Food and Agriculture Organisation.

At Find Your Feet one of the things we are really good at is composting! But I have to admit that it is our in-country office staff and their local partner organisations that are the experts. I write a lot about the positive effects of composting and saw lots of compost pits on my recent trip to India – but realised I didn’t actually know a lot about the techniques themselves!

So I decided to do a bit of research into the techniques we support farmers to use…and thought you would be interested to read a bit about what I learnt.

What is composting?

Kamla's vermi-compost

Composting is the biological decomposition of organic materials by microorganisms under controlled conditions to a relatively stable humus-like material. In the first stage bacteria, fungi, protozoa and other saprophytic organisms feed on the decaying organic materials, and in the later stages of decomposition invertebrates like earthworms further breakdown the composting materials.

The organic materials must include:

1. High carbon materials (brown and dry)
2. High nitrogen materials (green and wet)

Aerobic composting

Microscopic organisms, which use oxygen, feed upon the organic matter. They use the nitrogen, phosphorus, some of the carbon, and other required nutrients. Much of the carbon serves as a source of energy for the organisms and is burned up and respired as carbon dioxide (C02).

The compost volume gradually decreases and the phosphorous and most other nutrients become more concentrated. Some nitrogen will be lost during composting and some will convert from readily available forms (nitrate and ammonia) to more stable organic forms that are slowly released to crops.

‘Traditional Methods’ of composting are often based on passive aeration through measures like little and infrequent turnings or static aeration provisions like perforated poles/pipes. The process takes several months.

How aerobic composting is used by the farmers we support

NADEP compost is used lot in our India projects. It is carried out in specially constructed tanks with walls built like ‘honeycombs’ through which water is sprayed to prevent the compost becoming dry.

Indian farmers also use Vermi-compost. Earthworms not only speed up the composting process, they also contribute to the quality of the compost. ‘Casts’ produced by the earthworm are markedly higher in bacteria, organic material, available nitrogen, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and potassium than soil itself.

Meanwhile many of the farmers we support in Malawi make compost in pits and then use it to make liquid compost, which is easier to spread on the fields. They also make liquid manure by soaking it in water for a few weeks, which leaches much of the goodness of the manure into the water.

Gladys tending to her compost pit

Anaerobic composting

Other organisms can operate without oxygen (ie in anaerobic conditions), and this process is sometimes called fermentation. These organisms use nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients to live and to develop cell protoplasm, but they reduce the organic nitrogen to organic acids and ammonia. The carbon from the organic compounds which is not utilized in the cell protein is liberated mainly in the reduced form of methane (CH4). A small portion of carbon may be respired as carbon dioxide (C02).

How anaerobic composting is used by the farmers we support

Bokash compost is used by many of the farmers we support in Malawi. Soaked maize bran is used along with rotten fruits or local beer wastes to ferment crop residues and the heap is covered with a plastic sheet to maintain the temperature.

Malawian farmers also practice a unique composting technique called chimoto. Weeds and other compost materials are heaped with soil into a dome like shape. A hole is bored at the top of the dome to observe the temperature and to add water as necessary to facilitate fermentation.

One of the main benefits of these anaerobic methods is that they far quicker than months of turning a compost pile. Our partners say that farmers are able to use their Bokash compost for basal dressing within three weeks.