Forest Farm Husbandry - Softcover

Fedden, Matthew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853390062 ISBN 13: 9781853390067

Verlag: Practical Action Publishing, 1988

Inhaltsangabe

Based on experience at Ghana's Technology Consultancy Centre, this handbook describes successful methods of minimum tillage farming and alley cropping. It suggests that alley cropping offers great promise as a soil conservation and enriching technique.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Matthew Fedden graduated from Leeds University with a degree in Applied Zoology. He undertook research into tropical rainforest ecology in the Carribean and Africa, and worked at the University of Science and Technology, Ghana before returning to the UK in 1989 to work with artist blacksmith, Alan Evans.

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Forest Farm Husbandry

By Matthew Fedden

Practical Action Publishing Ltd

Copyright © 1988 Intermediate Technology Publications
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-85339-006-7

Contents

1 The Case for Minimum Tillage and Alley Cropping in the Forest Zone of Ghana, 1, 
2 Soil Fertility, 5, 
3 Weed Control, 11, 
4 Using Chemicals on the Farm, 15, 
5 The Practice of Minimum Tillage, 25, 
6 Practising Alley Cropping, 35, 
7 Disease and Pest Management, 43, 
8 Storage of Cowpeas and Maize, 55, 
9 Book keeping, Cash Flow and Raising a Loan, 62, 
Appendix 1 Compost Making, 65, 
Appendix 2 Calibrating a Sprayer, 67, 

CHAPTER 1

The Case for Minimum Tillage and Alley Cropping in the Forest Zone of Ghana

With her rapidly increasing population, one of Ghana's most pressing concerns has been, and will, for the foreseeable future, be the need to feed her people. Ghana's climate and soils have great productive potential and the need for food must be met from within. The problem is most serious in towns where access to land is limited and where the number of mouths to feed is greatest. Such a situation results in the land around towns being rapidly overused and depleted, forcing food production into remoter areas.

By far the majority of farms in the forest zone of Ghana are smallholdings farmed with cutlass, hoe and a match. Because of the rate at which plants grow in Ghana, every farmer is fighting a constant battle against weeds which will otherwise choke the crop. This battle takes up great amounts of time during the growing season and, the larger the farm, the longer it will take. In practice the traditional cutlass and hoe farmer is severely limited in the area that can be cultivated by the need to control weed growth. The production capacity of a farmer is directly related to the area that can be cultivated. The traditional farmer operates a way of agriculture ideally suited to providing food for a small community well supplied with accessible land. It is an extensive system which grows crops for three or four years and then operates a fallow for considerably longer. It fails when the community becomes a town, as the scale of production is too great for both the agricultural system and the land. The fallow period is the first to suffer, and the soil rapidly becomes worn out through overcropping. The result is vast areas of exposed laterite and sparse scrub often seen surrounding towns. A temporary solution is for the farmer to farm more distant land. The distance travelled increases demands on the farmers time during the growing season, reducing productivity whilst spoiling more land. These then are the problems to which an appropriate solution is being sought.

It was thought that mechanization offered a solution, increasing productivity at a stroke. Such a solution takes no account of the majority of Ghana's farmers: very few can afford a tractor. The resulting machinery compaction and tillage takes no account of the notoriously fragile nature of the soil, nor the numerous obstacles such as tree roots, which damage expensive machinery in the forest zone. Finally it relies on a good infrastructure to service and maintain the machinery. This is lacking in many parts of Ghana. It has some success further north in the Ghana midlands, these being more suited to mechanized tillage. These areas are a long way from the demand, and transport is expensive. The northern areas enjoy a less favourable growing climate and have lower potential yields than the forest zone.

Minimum tillage is a widely used farming technique that can be adapted to provide a solution. It is based on the principle that the land should be disturbed as little as possible, neither ploughed nor hoed. Weeds are controlled by the use of chemicals and mulching. In the forest, chemical application is best done by one man with a relatively cheap knapsack sprayer, rather than a tractor-mounted unit. Dead weeds are left on the soil to provide a protective cover or mulch. This inhibits further weed emergence, and it also protects the soil against erosion caused by heavy rainfall. Eventually, the mulch will break down and add to the soil fertility. When planting, the seed has to be sown in the untilled soil. Planting implements vary in complexity from a cutlass to a tractor-drawn pneumatic seed drill. TCC advocates the use of the Rolling Injection Planter. This simple tool is made in Kumasi and Tamale, and can readily be manufactured by workshops in other localities. It is hand-pushed by one person. The area planted is much greater than can be achieved by the use of the cutlass alone, experience showing that two acres can be covered in four hours. Obstacles such as stumps can easily be avoided by this wheelbarrow-like machine. Laying mulch down between the crop rows will prevent much weed emergence. The few weeds that do emerge are easily dealt with.

Using minimum tillage techniques, the small-scale farmers are able to control the weed problem, and thus expand their farm size. Minimum tillage is a good way of conserving soil fertility. It is designed for continual cropping, therefore land is more productive. When minimum tillage techniques are used in conjunction with beneficial (leguminous) crops such as cowpeas, it is possible to reclaim previously barren land. (This feat has been demonstrated at Approtech Farms Ltd, Kumasi, where TCC has been involved with a long running minimum tillage programme.) All these features can improve the productivity of both the small-scale farmer and the land being farmed. The techniques are ideal for farms close to towns where the demand for food is greatest. So the food is being grown right where it is needed.

There are foreign exchange costs involved with minimum tillage farming. Such things as fertilizers, chemicals and sprayers are currently all imported. Any technological advance from traditional agriculture is difficult, if not impossible to envisage without some foreign exchange expenditure on agricultural inputs. In this case the money would be invested into a system that has been proven to work in the Kumasi region, rather than a mechanized system that has been repeatedly demonstrated not to be self-supporting in the forest zone. It would benefit large numbers of small-scale farmers rather than a few well-off farmers. It would also benefit the environs of towns as well as providing their food.

In the context of the present drive to revive the cash cropping of perennial crops such as cocoa and oil palm, minimum tillage does not involve burning. Every year bush fires destroy and set back huge areas of productive cocoa and palm plantations. Minimum tillage is compatible with farming perennial crops. Unlike methods relying on burning or soil disturbance, it poses no threat to the crop, and can be used confidently within vulnerable young plantations, before the trees attain maturity.

Alley cropping is the new form of a traditional technique in Ghana: agroforestry. Currently it is receiving attention from scientists throughout the humid tropics. It is a technique of managing a farm so that land fertility is protected and enhanced while need for the imported inputs necessary to grow crops on the same land is reduced year after year. TCC has been practising minimum tillage on an alley cropping plot, on a farm near Kumasi. Selected species of trees have been planted, which fix large amounts of nitrogen in the soil. These trees are planted in rows amongst the crops, and the canopy shade during fallow periods (dry season and between crops) is an effective weed suppressor. During cropping the trees...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Practical Action Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1988
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1853390062
• ISBN 13: 9781853390067
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 76
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland