Caleb's paddock farming

In Rongo, Nyanza, Caleb has 20 cows which caused problems roaming around. He opted for a kind of zero-grazing, in which he cuts and carries fodder to the cows. At night the cows are kept in a stable at home – to prevent theft. In the day time the cows are pegged together in a small area of with a trough where they eat from.

For 1 week that area is enriched with the cow urine, the dung, and the leftover fodder that the cows spread around the trough: the three together create a rich topsoil. After one week the cows are moved to the next “paddock”. So it takes 1 week for 20 cows to enrich an area of 100m2 (10x10m). That area is first planted with tomato (and the plan is to follow with kale “sukumawiki”).

Caleb also has other innovations:

1.                   On his farm he uses Vetiver System to stabilize fish pond banks and attract insects which are one source for fish feed; chicken manure is also used to stimulate water-weed growth for fish.

2.                   He assists other women in the community with a ‘pass-on-the-gift’ supply of local chicks and advise on how to raise chicken: integrated chicken and zero-grazing. Cow manure is dumped in the chicken pen, and chicken browse for insects in the dung. The resulting mix with chicken drops makes for very good manure, sold to kitchen gardeners.

You can contact Caleb: jaratenodondi@gmail.com

Other innovations to feature in the future:
- Amilo community: Click here to visit their site
- Rongai community: rehab of gullies in black cotton soil at Oltayani Primary school, green hills nurseries, contact Jack Mwangi, 0721797133, jacemwangi@yahoo.com

The WOCAT website collects innovations on sustainable land & water resource management. It is very resourceful.

Visit WOCAT

The Zambian Conservation Farming Unit (CFU) is highly specialised in addressing the problem of hard pans (as result of years of using disk ploughs).

Visit CFU

Conservation Farming (CF) involves adopting a number of husbandry practices that together comprise a complete farming system. CF is suited to all commonly grown annual crops, including maize, bulrush millet, sorghum, cotton, sunflower, groundnuts, soya beans, cowpeas, gram, pigeon pea and sesame. Although individual CF systems have been developed for either hand hoe or oxen farmers, the principles are fundamentally the same.

The basic technologies involved in CF are:

• The retention of crop residues (as opposed to the widespread practice of burning).
• Restricting tillage of the land to the precise area where the crop is to be sown i.e. only 10-15% of the surface area of the land is tilled to establish crops. Tilling only to a depth sufficient to break through plough or hoe pans.
• The completion of land preparation (in Agro-ecological Regions I & II) in the dry season.
  The establishment of a precise and permanent grid of planting basins, planting furrows or contoured ridges, within which successive crops are planted each year and within which purchased or organic nutrients are accurately applied.
• Early and continuous weeding that inhibits seeding and in time reduces the soil weed bank.
  Rotations or inter-cropping with nitrogen fixing legumes that occupy a maximum of 30% of the cultivated area.

The principal aim of CF is to restore and maintain the fertility of the land in the 15% surface area and associated rooting zone occupied by the planted crop. The intervening area (85% of inter-rows) can remain relatively infertile as this area is occupied by competitive weeds.

The specific steps that should be taken by farmers in order to cultivate their crops within a CF system are shown in the handbooks on the CFU site.

Vetiver (Chrysopogon zizanioides) is a non-invasive wetlands plant. Originating from southern India it was transplanted across the tropics +100y ago as a cash crop for oil production (perfume). KARI thoroughly studied it and with NEMA it strongly promotes Vetiver Systems.

Vetiver has stiff stems and a deeply penetrating, strong soil binding root system: very effective in retarding water flow, improving infiltration, binding soil, stabilising slopes on roadsides, bridges, railways, banks of rivers, canals, dams, dikes and sand dunes.
Due to its tolerance to extreme soil & water conditions and high chemical uptake capacity VS is also very suitable for treatment of waste water from sewage, solid waste, industries and mining.

For Kenya to sustain food security and supply of water, Vetiver System is a highly effective bio-technology to reverse degradation:
conserving soil and water on-farm, supporting rehab of natural vegetation, and protecting infrastructure slopes and drainage.

Visit TVNI website

Some words from Dick Grimshaw (TVNI chairman) about sustainable road constuction ...

The need for low cost rural roads that require minimal maintenance is critical for rural people. USA rural road program in the 1930s helped lift rural areas out of depression and spurred on agricultural growth.
Today's developing countries need to develop rural road infrastructure as one of the critical investments to reduce poverty. Recently I was in correspondence with an acquaintance of mine in Kenya on this topic, and thought I would share my letter on this blog as it has important
implications:

"There is overwhelming evidence from around the world that the Vetiver System (VS) is an effective and low cost solution for cut and fill, and raised road bed stabilization. Highway examples include China, Italy, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Congo (DR), Madagascar, El Salvador, Honduras and Venezuela; and for Railways - Australia, China, South Africa, Madagascar, and India are using VS, the latter includes VS in its standard design manuals. Vetiver has also been used in these and other countries for bridge abutment and culvert stabilization (where it always works well). Research has been carried out on the plant's engineering properties - (more than most other grasses?)

Most government agencies and their engineering staff have shown little interest or understanding how VS functions. As an example very few engineers understand that vetiver hedgerows apart from nailing a slope in place also spreads out down slope water flow which reduces the concentration of potential damaging water load, thus spreading out the potential risk of high pore pressure spots, and as a result reduces the chance of slope slippage and slope erosion.

Sometimes engineers turn to their agricultural colleagues for advice - sadly the latter have little to offer, and often through ignorance give the wrong advice. On other occasions those responsible for construction think they know better, apply the technology incorrectly (some times deliberately) and then report failure! It is interesting that where ever the Vetiver System has been correctly applied it has been nearly 100% successful.

The main constraints to using VS on roads have in my experience been:
inadequate funding for road slope stabilization, lack of knowledge, lack of supervision, ignorance (poor planting technique, planting a grass other than vetiver, and complete neglect after planting), and corrupt practices.

I grew up in Kenya and have worked there. During my recent visit I saw many cases where VS could be used for long term road stabilization. In many instances I saw attempts to stabilize road slopes with other grasses that had failed because of their inappropriateness, over grazing, drought, lack of community involvement, and general misapplication. VS cannot be used everywhere but it could be used on many troublesome sites in Kenya (and all other countries in the tropics and semi tropics).

I understand that one of your reservations is the lack of planting material. This is a Catch 22 issue, and can be easily rectified by advanced planning. There is good quality vetiver planting material in Kenya (I don't know of a tropical country that does not have vetiver), and additional plant material can be very quickly acquired using local farmers to multiply and sell vetiver. I don't know how much you know about the Kenya smallholder tea industry, but I recall that it was initially thought that only commercial and centralized nurseries managed by professionally trained staff could produce good quality tea seedlings for small holders. Not so, within a very short time there were thousands of farmers propagating quality tea seedlings. The same would be true for Vetiver plant material.

In Ethiopia the current accelerating on farm adoption of vetiver for soil and water conservation is farmer driven - neighbors providing the plant material and advice - no conservation engineers or other stumbling bureaucrats needed!! In Madagascar a major slope stabilization of a road approach through a very large "moving"
sanddune was successfully fixed using VS. The 30 odd local small farmers who supplied millions of vetiver plants to the road contractors made a lot of money that changed their lives.

Interestingly in Haiti, after many successful attempts by the engineers to block (despite on ground evidence in Haiti to the
contrary) VS use on all sorts of spurious grounds, the government, including the Prime Minister, has now accepted that VS should be used for soil and water conservation and road stabilization, because most other approaches have either failed or are too expensive.

Likewise at last years workshop in Ethiopia the overwhelming majority of the 200 attendees from all the major agencies, NGOs, farmers and others supported the use of VS for soil and water conservation and thoroughly rejected the "engineered" fanya ju and other constructed terraces on the grounds of cost, maintenance and lack of discernible farm benefits.

Climate change appears to be effecting Kenya and other East African countries already - more devastating extreme floods and droughts. The beauty of vetiver is that it helps to protect from the damage of extreme rainfall events, and survives drought, and it can be put into place and become effective much quicker than other technologies. My first job back in the 1960s was as a conservation officer in Zambia.
We used to build small dams and rural roads. I wish that I had known about vetiver in those days. It would have been by far the best technology for stabilizing rural roads, drains, miter drains, culverts and bridges, and for small dam and spillway stabilization.

I have included two photos under the files button (Indonesia 1&2) from a highway trial in Indonesia comparing Vetiver with other grasses, including the fabled Bahia grass. I need not comment on the differences between technologies, they are quite obvious.

One last point, in general, with few exceptions including China and Vietnam, the private sector has made better and more effective use of vetiver than the public (government sector). I have to assume that the two sectors are motivated differently. The private sector is looking to improve its "bottom line" by doing an effective and efficient job that will attract additional contracts, where as government agencies are looking for big budget line items that attract in the short term bigger and more costly contracts, with little attention to long term sustainability and effectiveness.

If nothing else, I would strongly urge that your roads agency sets up some similar trials (under proper design and supervision) to those in Indonesia to prove for itself the value of the technology. Better still go and visit some of the places where VS has been successfully used for slope stabilization".

Dick Grimshaw, chairman TVNI

The BBC has recently (twice!) shown this great docu: "Hope in a Changing Climate".

Watch the film

This is indeed what Kenya needs... This video and another one "Lessons from the Loess Plateau" give a good impression of what can be done, and what PLUS-Kenya wants to help achieve.

John Liu's movie shows that - if only the value of the environmental function of vegetation is understood - severely dis-functional landscapes, degraded over years of agricultural malpractice, and other abuses, can be restored and become functional within a really short time!

It needs education, to understand that in some areas, by education, increasing areas for natural vegetation and reducing the availability of farm land one can bring about increased production, as it forces farmers to adopt more intensive (read: less degrading) farming practices, in which water infiltration is optimized, and fertility used more efficiently, whereas the natural vegetation brings back services that had disappeared in the period of degradation: e.g. supply of clean water, fuel, fodder.

The cases provided in the movie (restoration projects in China', Ethiopia & Rwanda) are of enormous scale, and considered of national importance. The result is stunning: it really  improved lives for large numbers of people. We need to do something like this in Kenya.

Please, tell me, which area should be start? Taveta? Budalang'i catchment? Kerio Valley?

The lessons are "ELPEE":
   1. Educate, educate, for a mindshift, understanding the intrinsic and economic value of biodiversity in functional eco-systems
   2. Land tenure: to convince local people, assure they remain the tenants of the land
   3. Participation of stakeholders at all management levels
   4. Employment creating solutions: engage many young people
   5. Extension, evaluation, upscaling.

This is to REAP these results:
   1. Rural development, based on
   2. Economic use of land for farming, together with
   3. Appreciation of land set aside for conservation, rehab of natural vegetation

   4. Profit making AND pro-poor development.

Nobel Peace Price laureate Norman Borlaug had some relevant lessons to get innovations adopted:

1. Feed Everyone (innovations that work for small and larger farms)

2. Policy Matters: "Government policy should be sensible, supportive and never hinder the farmer’s will to produce more".

3. Feed the Plants: "To feed the people first feed the soils, ... supporting high production plants".

4. Demonstrate, Demonstrate, Demonstrate: "... Farmers do not need to be told … but they do need to see".

5. Make a Profit: "... To succeed on a grand scale a plant should be profitable enough to double the family income. This is true among the hungry and especially among the poor". 

6. Circumvent Entrenched Interests: "Recruit farmers and young scientists to the cause, then leave it to them to battle apathy, anger and umbrage, among their own officials. Aroused rural awareness is a force more powerful than foreign scientists or even local functionaries".

There is a steady flow relevant lessons learned from introduction of innovations; some of these, from Nobel Peace Price laureate Norman Borlaug are highly relevant to how PLUS-Kenya works:

1. Feed Everyone: "Opt to feed the whole population, not just the hungry. That way every citizen has a stake in overcoming the inevitable obstacles". PLUS-Kenya promotes innovations to conserve soil and water for a wide variety of stakeholders; small and large and small farmers, CBO, NGO, local and national government and private sector: any organizations and sectors affecting land and water resources including WATSAN, agriculture, roads. This is to involve a diversity and large numbers of stakeholder.

2. Policy Matters: "Government policy should be sensible, supportive and never hinder the farmer’s will to produce more". Government support is very important for new technology to take root and expand; government policies that are contrary to farmer or other user needs often exist due to ignorant promotion of inappropriate technologies. TVNI often encounters this problem, when introducing Vetiver Systems (an alternative and superior technology).

3. Feed the Plants: "To feed the people first feed the soils, make them capable of supporting high production plants". Here Borlaug was referring to raising soil fertility through increased fertilizer use (frequently under irrigated conditions). PLUS-Kenya promotes technology that provides the means of improving soil moisture and the retention of plant nutrients. At this time of climate change and increased pressure on land the need for better soil moisture management, retention of rainfall, and optimizing fertilizer impact on crop yields is essential and requires technologies such as Vetiver Systems to be widely adopted.

4. Demonstrate, Demonstrate, Demonstrate: "Work where everyone can see your results and judge for themselves. Farmers do not need to be told … but they do need to see". That touches on PLUS-Kenya’s core values: End-users should see the evidence for themselves, and be able to demonstrate and upscale it in their professional or local communities. For example, although difficult to double incomes, Vetiver System came close to doing that: lifting crop yields significantly and visibly, and helping water sources regain their permanence, that was so visible that its adoption was expanded on large scale in western Ethiopia; in some cases of drought conditions crops would have not survived without Vetiver hedgerows.

5. Make a Profit: "When something makes a profit people will adopt change. To succeed on a grand scale a plant should be profitable enough to double the family income. This is true among the hungry and especially among the poor". This must be as true for the innovations promoted by PLUS-Kenya as it was for Norman Borlaug’s improved wheat. There are some good examples where the private sector is effectively promoting innovations related to land and water resources, particularly in the engineering and water sectors. Even in agriculture we could consider using fertilizer companies and small rural retailers as a means to promote soil and water conservation to farmers (since better soil protection and improved soil moisture would result in better plant response to fertilizer, more reliable and less risky crop production in drought years, resulting in higher demand and profit for both farmers and fertilizer salesmen). Also here one of PLUS-Kenya’s core values is relevant: Economic Incentives for adoption of innovations have to be significant for PLUS-Kenya’s end-users who include not only a diversity of farmers but also water polluting communities and industries, water providers, financiers, decision makers and implementers of civil works like roads, dams and dikes, etc.

6. Circumvent Entrenched Interests: "Recruit farmers and young scientists to the cause, then leave it to them to battle apathy, anger and umbrage, among their own officials. Aroused rural awareness is a force more powerful than foreign scientists or even local functionaries". Borlaug used poorly educated teenagers to scare the birds away, then he trained them to carry out the intricate and delicate task of hand pollinating wheat, not just a few but thousands of plants. He would not have achieved the results that he did without these young and “untrained” bird boys. On some countries we can see the same, when school children are leading the introduction of innovations to their communities. We see farmers in India and Ethiopia (and Kenya) whose knowledge and enthusiasm about certain innovations eclipses that of trained graduates and other government functionaries. In Kenya, policies are challenged to address these facts on land and water resources. Annually… - floods and landslides affect hundreds of thousands, and kill dozens (many children) - floods cost 71 million US$ (5.3 billion KSh) - droughts cost 140 million US$ (11 billion Ksh) - together, floods and droughts cost us 210 million US$ (16 billion Ksh) or more than 2% of GDP - for farmers, regular supply of water, and soil moisture retention are among the toughest challenges; with high levels of soil and water runoff, the economic return of fertilizer is relatively low - the value of soil loss in Kenya is 3-4 times its annual income from tourism! In Nyando basin alone the annual soil loss is at a cost of 43 million US$ (28 billion KSh) - dams are silting up - for both urban & rural poor water supply in sufficient quality and quantity is challenge no.1; it affects health (70% of hospital visits unnecessary if people had access to clean water!) and education.

Nurseries that are reliable suppliers of quality planting materials.

Voi (Coast): The original supply from Voi dates from many years back. The planting materials were then obtained from KARI Kisii. Paul Mwadime Kombo (mwadimekombo1@yahoo.com) has the largest Vetiver nursery in Kenya. Call him: 0724783690, or 0711918133, or 0734835029.

Rongo (Nyanza): Caleb Omolo (jaratengodondi@gmail.com) has a nursery with Vetiver and trees; he also supplies Vetiver slips in polypots (e.g. for infrastructure works). Call him: 0714943355.

Egerton / Nakuru: James Owino (joowin@yahoo.com) is Coordinator of the Kenya Vetiver Network. He also supplies Vetiver slips. Call him: 0721242906 or 0735290318.

There are at least another 13 Vetiver nurseries in Nyanza, in Amilo village, Siaya, Kisii, Homa Bay, etc. Ask NEMA (estherooko@yahoo.com).

Do you want your nursery to feature here? Mail us: pluskenya@gmail.com

TwinN is a freeze dried microbial product for use in improving crop productivity. The microbes are Diazotrophs whose modes of action in improving plant productivity have been comprehensively described in the literature over many years. TwinN has been successfully used in broad acre crops including wheat, corn, barley, oats, sorghum, rice, cotton, soybean, lupins, mung beans, pastures and many others. It has also been used in many horticultural and tree crops including cauliflower, tomato, lettuces, celery, spinach, potatoes, grapes, apples, macadamia and citrus. The microbes are applied to the foliage or the root system. After application they multiply to exist within the plant foliage, stem and roots as endophytes and also colonise the rhizosphere (the soil zone in close proximity to the roots and root hairs). TwinN can be applied in combination with reduced rates of chemical nitrogen in conventional production systems, or applied without co-application of nitrogen fertiliser in organic systems.

TwinN is a reliable, cost effective selection of high yielding nitrogen fixing microbes for use as a soil improver in all crops, leguminous and non-leguminous. TwinN operates by converting atmospheric nitrogen into a plant available form. In effect, TwinN microbes function like millions of tiny nitrogen fertiliser factories to provide nitrogen in a readily available form directly to the plant tissues and root zone. TwinN also improves yields by other mechanisms – see  TwinN Mechanism of Action.

TwinN is a freeze-dried biological alternative to traditional nitrogenous fertilisers. Stringent quality control over production ensures that each vial provides consistently high numbers of viable TwinN microbes. Every batch is tested under standardised Quality Control procedures for purity and correct concentration. The freeze drying process results in an extremely concentrated product with a long shelf life. This is a key difference from most bio-fertiliser products and ensures that each vial of TwinN delivers consistently very high numbers of functional microbes to your crop. The freeze drying process also enables the product to be transported and applied very cost effectively.

TwinN is designed for use in combination with conventional cropping practices where it enables large reductions in the need for chemical nitrogen fertilisers. It is also used in fully organic cropping systems where it has proven to be an effective source of nitrogen.

TwinN key results
A comparison of soybean plots at two USDA trial sites in Missouri that received TwinN showed:
-    an additional 8.6% yield increase in the TwinN treated sites at one site and a 12.8% yield increase at the second trial site.
-    8 Measurement of specific classes of beneficial soil microbes showed that they were increased substantially in TwinN treated plots.
-    Application of TwinN resulted in a large decrease in the number of Fusarium fungal colonies on roots compared to Roundup treated plots that did not receive TwinN. The decreases were 40% and 43% at the two trial sites respectively.
-    Application of TwinN increased Rhizobium nodule weight per plant by 16% compared to Roundup treated plots not treated with TwinN.

In a maize trial in South Africa where chemical N application was reduced to 25% and two foliar TwinN applications used, the yield was increased 15% and profit was increased 28%.