Simple fertilizer technique promises to feed Africa's hungry

Jean-Louis Santini, Yahoo News 29 Aug 08;

A simple and cheap technique of applying fertilizer in small doses at the right time can double wheat crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa and feed millions of people, agronomists said in a report.

A four-year experiment with the technique in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger has boosted sorghum and millet production by 44 to 120 percent, and family incomes by 50 to 130 percent, said an International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) report published Thursday.

The successful technique coupled with awareness of soil type, grain variety and irregular rainfall in the region "has the potential to end widespread hunger in drought prone areas of sub-Saharan Africa", said ICRISAT Assistant Director for West and Central Africa Ramadjita Tabo.

He hopes the system will be adopted by 500,000 farmers in the region over the next five years.

Farmers are quick to learn and can be trained in just one week, Tabo told AFP.

He said they are shown that only six grams of fertilizer per plant is enough, and that small holes dug in the dry ground and filled with manure before the rainy season will hold water for a longer time.

When it starts to rain, a micro-dosis of fertilizer and a plant are placed in each hole so roots can spread quickly an retain even more water, Tabo said.

"Land degradation is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa where the soil has been overused, coupled with low, unpredictable rainfall," he stressed.

Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are so poor they exploit the land to the maximum and consider the cost of fertilizer too high a risk in case of a bad harvest.

"With microdosing, they don't invest much and that reduces their risk," Tabo said.

Fertilizer in Africa is difficult to find and costs two to six times more than the average world price because of low sale volumes, difficulty of transport and because it is not produced locally.

With micro-doses, farmers only need 10 percent of the fertilizer used for wheat and five percent for corn, the ICRISAT report said.

In soils low in nutrients like phosphate, pottasium and nitrogen, micro-doses of fertilizer are enough to double crop yields, Tabo said.

"Reports indicate that land degradation affects more than half of sub-Saharan Africa, leading to loss of an estimated 42 billion dollars in income and five million hectares (12.5 million acres) of productive land each year," ICRISAT said.

"The majority of farmlands suffer from poor soil fertility due to poor farming techniques, nutrient deficiency and lack of water," which also degrades the environment, it added.

Unable to feed their families or afford to buy food, farmers abandon unproductive land to clear forests and plow new land, a practice blamed for an estimated three fourths of the deforestation in sub-Saharan Africa.

ICRISAT has also come with a system allowing poor farmers to borrow against their crops, which they store and sell when the prices go up, eliminating the middle man.

"Thousands of successful experiments across the dryland areas of West and Southern Africa demonstrate that microdosing can boost yields enough to eliminate the need for food aid," ICRISAT Director General William Dar said in the report.

ICRISAT is funded by international donors including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).