Progress so far!!!
It has been months of lull and pertubing silence, but here we are and promising to continue blogging on our successes and failures as we roll out our Conservation and Agroforestry project at Lwanda Dudi Secondary School in Siaya, Kenya funded by Teach A Man TO Fish, UK.This silence was partly contributed to by post-election violence in Kenya that made communication in general difficult.
The project has gone full cycle in terms of its key activities; Poultry unit, School Garden, Tree Nursery and linked school greening initiative and Green Food Kiosk which serves as an outlet for produce from the project activities. The structures are down and what remains is to enhance our efforts and operationalise the Green Food Kiosk which is yet to open its doors.
The project played host to Teach A Man To Fish Founder and Director, Nicholas Kafka in the month of April 2008, who was impressed with the advances the project has made so far.He stressed the need to improve on record keeping and involvement of students on the same in terms of financial input, sales, profits and loses. His visit was climaxed by conference in Kisumu whose participants were drawn from schools and civil society organizations that ascribe to the philosophy of self sufficient schools and entreprenuership.
Welcome to our blogging again and next month we will provide the finer details of our successes and failures.
Ecofinder
The project has gone full cycle in terms of its key activities; Poultry unit, School Garden, Tree Nursery and linked school greening initiative and Green Food Kiosk which serves as an outlet for produce from the project activities. The structures are down and what remains is to enhance our efforts and operationalise the Green Food Kiosk which is yet to open its doors.
The project played host to Teach A Man To Fish Founder and Director, Nicholas Kafka in the month of April 2008, who was impressed with the advances the project has made so far.He stressed the need to improve on record keeping and involvement of students on the same in terms of financial input, sales, profits and loses. His visit was climaxed by conference in Kisumu whose participants were drawn from schools and civil society organizations that ascribe to the philosophy of self sufficient schools and entreprenuership.
Welcome to our blogging again and next month we will provide the finer details of our successes and failures.
Ecofinder
posted by Ecofinder at
3:16 AM
2 Comments:
This is great stuff, i believe every Kenyan and African Child should be encouraged to participate in agriculture. The knowledge accumulated from such interaction is enormous.
Great job, well done. Please, find time to forward us any intersting bits, or visit our website for further interaction; http://www.privateschools.co.ke/
or E-Mail: info@privateschools.co.ke
GARDENS/MINI-FARMS NETWORK
Wrokshops: USA - TX, MS, FL, CA, AR, NM; Mexico, Rep. Dominicana, Côté d’Ivoire,
Nigeria, Nicaragua, Honduras, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Haiti, England, India, Uzbekistan
minifarms@gmail.com
Workshops in organic, no-till, permanent bed gardening, mini-farming and mini-ranching,
using bucket drip irrigation, worldwide, in English & Español
Proven Practices for Farming
The solution to world hunger is teaching the farmers to farm profitably and sell locally. There is a grassroots movement, around the world, for families and groups to produce their own food due to cost, flavor and chemical contamination. "There's this belief that in order to stop poverty, we have to find ways to get people to stop being farmers. What we need to do is find ways to stop them from being poor farmers." Amy Smith, MIT
These are based on the internet, US & international agriculture magazines, experiences teaching agriculture in many countries, research data and farmer experiences in those countries and a demonstration garden. They are ecologically sustainable, environmentally responsible, socially just and economically viable. There is unlimited, documented proof. There are 90,000,000 no-till hectares worldwide.
Fukaoka Farm, Japan, has been no-till [rice, small grains, vegetables] for 70 years. At the time of my visits, an Indian farmer has been no-till [vegetables] for 5 years, a Malawi farmer has been no-till [vegetables] on permanent beds for 25 years and a Honduras farmer has been no-till [vegetables & fruit] on permanent beds on the contour (73° slope] for 8 years. Ruth Stout [USA] had a no-till garden for 30 years and 7,000 people visited her garden. Free DVD available.
No technique yet devised by man has been anywhere near as effective at halting soil erosion and making food production truly sustainable as 0-tillage (Baker)
1. Restore the soil to its natural health. Contamination: inorganic pesticides, insecticides & fertilizers
2. Maintain the healthy soil. Healthy soil produces healthy crops with highest yields and prevents most disease, pest, weed and erosion problems.
3. Increase the soil’s organic matter every year.
4. Little or no external inputs [It is not necessary to buy anything, from anybody.]
5. Leave crop residue on top of soil. No burning. You are burning up fertilizer. Do not plow it into the soil.
6. Plant green manure/cover crops to increase the soil organic matter. Seeds are available in every country.
7. Plant the new crop in the crop residue by opening up a row or a place for the seed.
8. Plant every field every year [no fallow land]
9. 0-tillage: no plowing, no digging, no cultivating. No hard physical labor required so children and the elderly can farm easily. After two or three years the yields can double while reducing the labor by half compared to traditional farming. Farmers farm ten acres alone using hand tools only [Honduras]
10. Tree crops: fruit, nuts, coffee [shade-grown], etc. Use perennial cover crops
11. Permanent paths [walking]
12. Permanent beds. They were used 2000 BC in Guatemala, Mexico and many other coun-tries. 15-25% of the land is in paths and that saves 15-25% of the seed, water and labor but yields will be higher.
13. Hand tools: machete, weed cutter, seeding hoe. Local blacksmith should make them.
14. Soil always covered. Never leave the soil bare.
15. No compost making. Use the organic matter for mulch. If there is an excess, pile it up and use later.
16. Vermiculture: Not necessary; too much labor. Do it in the soil in the fields.
17. SRI - system of rice intensification. Double yields, reduces water requirements by 50% and reduces labor.
18. SRI for other crops: sugar cane, finger millet, cotton, wheat, mustard.
19. Bucket drip irrigation should be used during the dry season and in areas of low rainfall: Imported bucket drip kits are US$15. A bucket drip line can be made locally from poly tubing [US$3, Nicaragua]. One will irrigate a row of crops 33 meters long using only 20 liters of water per day. A dripline can be moved to irrigate several rows per day. Water can be from a stream, pond or well. A drip kit returns $20 per month to the farmer [FAO study].
Ken Hargesheimer minifarms@gmail.com
When Soil is Plowed
Dr. Elaine Ingham, describes an undisturbed grassland—where a wide diversity of plants grow, their roots mingling with a wide diversity of soil organisms—and how it changes when it is plowed. [The same is true of a jungle, rainforest, forest, etc]
A typical teaspoon of native grassland soil contains between 600 million and 800 million individual bacteria that are members of perhaps 10,000 species. Several miles of fungi are in that teaspoon of soil, as well as 10,000 individual protozoa. There are 20 to 30 beneficial nematodes from as many as 100 species. Root-feeding nematodes are quite scarce in truly healthy soils. They are present, but in numbers so low that it is rare to find them.
After only one plowing, a few species of bacteria and fungi disappear because the food they need is no longer put back in the system. But for the most part, all the suppressive organisms, all the nutrient cyclers, all the decomposers, all the soil organisms that rebuild good soil structure are still present and trying to do their jobs.
But tillage continues to deplete soil organic matter and kill fungi. The larger predators are crushed, their homes destroyed. The bacteria go through a bloom and blow off huge amounts of that savings-account organic matter. With continued tillage, the "policemen" (organisms) that compete with and inhibit disease are lost. The "architects" that build soil aggregates are lost. So are the "engineers"—the larger organisms that design and form the larger pores in soil. The predators that keep bacteria, fungi, and root-feeding organisms in check are lost. Disease suppression declines, soil structure erodes, and water infiltration decreases because mineral crusts form. Dr. Elaine Ingham, BioCycle, December 1998. (From ATTRA News, July 06)
Form a chapter of the FUTURE ORGANIC FARMERS OF [your country]. Email minifarms@gmail.com for more information.
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