Graber Neufeld in Africa: Zimbabwe

I (Doug) went to Harare, Zimbabwe for a week to attend conservation agriculture (CA) meetings. This was related to MCC's work with a CFGB (Canadian Foodgrains Bank) project on scaling up CA in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia).

Always important when traveling is the coffee situation. At the national training centre in Harare where we stayed, we relied on an automatic Nescafe machine. Put the cup under the nozzle, and push a button for "Nescafe black coffee", "Nescafe cappuccino", "Nescafe expresso", etc. It got us by for the week...

Devotions one morning by a participant. The partners doing agriculture are all Christian organizations, so it was an interesting mix of church and agriculture throughout the week!

CFGB has produced a curriculum for partners doing CA in the region, including a set of posters demonstrating CA principles (especially the 3 key principles of no-till, soil cover with mulch, and crop rotation). Here posters in Amharic for Ethiopia.

We had lots of meetings at the centre in Harare, but did get out in the field one day. Here we happened by a farm growing flowers, presumably for a cut flower market.

On the road to a farm visit in the back of a truck. The area is under drought conditions, although compared to Kenya in the dry season it looked quite lush and green. It is the end of the rainy season and they'd had rain the week before. So the bigger issue is probably later when it stops raining, and the lower rain during this season will impact harvests.

The countryside on the way to a farm visit, east of Harare about an hour. The countryside was rolling fields, interspersed with large granite hills. Alongside the road were fields that we're told used to be large commercial farms before the land was appropriated in the early 90's. Many of the farmers (descendents of white settlers) have since moved to Zambia and Malawi. There has been much made of the large decrease in crop production that followed, as the large farms went fallow. Food production has apparently increased since the difficult times in the 2000's.

Farmer who showed us around his CA farm. Our tour was led by a scientist working with CIMMYT, the international maize/grain research organization based in Mexico City.

There was lots of evidence of activity of China in Zimbabwe - banners in Chinese, a large mall catering to Chinese near our centre, etc. Zimbabwe currently uses the US dollar, but recently adopted the yuan also as legal tender.

Farmer explains his cropping system, including his experimental plots. The crop in the foreground is jackbean, used as a cover crop. He said that he fed some of the beans (?) to his goats, although others indicated that jackbean is poisonous to animals. Probably he had simply fed small amounts to his animals. Maize grown using CA is in the background; maize in an adjacent section grown conventionally was noticeably smaller and less healthy.

The soil was extremely sandy, obviously a challenge for maintaining moisture! The many rock formations were obviously granite, part of the ancient craton that makes up the geology of the region. These conditions are probably where CA tends to do better, especially when basins are used for planting (holes dug in the soil and filled with manure/mulch). In areas where drainage is not as good, CA practices like basins can actually hinder production. Here sunhemp is being grown as a cover crop.

One of the big questions with CA is weeds. Without tilling, the question is whether there are more issues with keeping weeds down -some say yes, others say no. In principle mulch like this keeps weeds down, and over the years as the seed bank decreases, weeding should decrease. In practice, farmers often use herbicides, at this farm the farmer tried first without herbicides but then had used "chlorpyrifos" (an organophosphate which is not actually a herbicide, so some confusion here. At any rate, not the best choice in terms of safety! we had studied this pesticide in Cambodia) Also it is clear that postharvest weeding is critical. If farmers don't weed after the crops are done, then weeds will grow and set seed, which then propagates next season. In principle, a postharvest cover crop can help this, although after harvest it is usually the drys season so harder to grow something.

Also here was the problem with termites eating up the mulch. This problem is often raised and there isn't consensus on a good solution for this. One farmer here said the solution was simple - pour a liter of petrol in the termite nest and then cover it up!

One of the trials run my CIMMYT, testing effects of crop residues, manure and fertilizer. Crop residue without manure or fertilizer didn't seem to help yield in this trial, but manure had a big effect. The center row of maize is without manure, to the left is maize with manure - a big effect!

A problem here, often found in fields, was a nematode infestation. In principle, increased organic matter boosts the fauna in the soil, including predators of nematodes. In practice this does happen, but the organic matter can also boost pests like cutworms, as reported by one researcher.

Another trial, looking at intercropping. This variety of maize was bred for straight vertical leaves, rather than drooping leaves. This hopefully allows for better growth of the other crop - here a bean.

Demonstrating some of the CA tools. Here a hoe that has a plastic tube and dispenser that automatically dispenses a seed and fertilizer as the farmer hoes. The original design was from China.