Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture

Current agricultural practices particularly on steep slopes have destroyed potentially fertile land. Mixed-crop farming and crop rotation must be encouraged and fully supported in order to curb all types of soil erosion. CHEMA is dedicated to providing trainings on soil fertility methods, including trench, vegetation, basket and boma composting, as well as green manuring with the use of mucuna, sunhemp, and canavalia. We also teach soil and water conservation measures such as contouring, terracing, measurement of the water table, and proper use of A-Frames and spirit levels. For small-scale farmers, CHEMA introduced systems of gardening like 9-maize-per-hole, double-digging to improve flow of air and water penetration, Mazimbuko bed, and mandala gardens for water collection.

Integrated Plant Nutrition Management

There are different technical possibilities for integrated plant nutrition management: mulching, green manure, organic manure, different compost techniques (trenches for silviculture, baskets for horticulture), intercropping or nitrogen-fixing plants. CHEMA staff visits a given farm in order to decide, together with the farmer, which techniques are most appropriate for the local situation. Then CHEMA staff will go through the methods together with the farmer; for instance, they will set up basket compost or a demo plot together so that the farmer gets first-hand experience.

There are two follow-up visits: After 2-3 months, a first follow-up to check if the farmer has actually kept up the suggested methods. If not, another training session is provided. If the first follow-up shows that the farmer had adopted the techniques, a second follow-up is made after 6 months to one year, to assess yield improvements. To that end, yields before and after adoption of the new techniques are compared. More recently, CHEMA has started to take pictures of fields and plants before and after adoption, to get a better documented comparison.

Improving soil fertility can minimize the necessity for pest management simply by strengthening plants and thus improving their natural defence capabilities. Furthermore, techniques such as intercropping increase plant diversity which is an additional protection against pests. Therefore, before thinking about pest management, integrated plant nutrition management should always be considered.

Integrated Pest Management

As part of integrated pest management, CHEMA recommends the use of resistant crop varieties and the following natural herbs/materials to be used as organic pesticides:

• Hot pepper,
• Mexican marigold,
• Ash,
• Lantana camara
• Stinging nettle,
• Garlic,
• Cow dung
• Aloe/ soot/ hotpepper
• Neem
• Tephrosia (Fish poison)
• Tethonia diversifolia
• Euphorbia plant, Aloe for termite control
• Hot water treatment on banana seedlings against weevils and nematode