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# 67 Rainwater is not seeping in.
Manage episode 398838662 series 2371188
Years of repeated tilling the same piece of land with a hand
hoe has compacted the soil in Malawi into a hard layer.
Plant roots cannot penetrate this “hard pan” and they grow
laterally, instead of vertically. Rainwater does not penetrate
the soil either but rushes along the furrows created in the
land, washing away the top soil. This is drastically reducing
agricultural production plummeting Malawi, whose
youthful population is dependent on agriculture, into crisis.
Climate crisis is making things worse. There are heavy
periods of rain, followed by dry spells and more frequent
cyclones. Standing crops are swept away and heavy rain
exacerbates soil erosion. Spells of drought makes plants,
already deprived of soil moisture, wither.
The solution is simple. Break down the hard pan of the soil.
Create deep beds and plant the crops there so that they are protected from storms. Rainwater seeps into the soil so that the soil has enough moisture during droughts. Tiyeni, a
local Malawi NGO has been training farmers on this
technique of “deep bed farming” for more than a decade.
They work with government extension workers who in turn
work with lead farmers who demonstrate these techniques
to other farmers.. Some of them have quadrupled their
yields. Tiyeni has worked with 30,000 farmers across the
county.
It does not cost too much money to train farmers. Isaac
Chavula feels that with about 450 million Malawian
Kwachas (less than US$ 300k) they can cover a lot of the
country. He also thinks it is a “lot of money”. That is
because funding for Tiyeni has been hard to come by – the
funding they get is from projects they do with universities
or companies. They are partnering with SIWI to raise the
profile of rainfed farming. Most of Sub-Saharan Africa’s
land is not irrigated. Governments have too little money to
invest in large irrigation projects. If all farmers in Malawi
could adopt deep bed farming, there may not be need to
spend a lot of money either in solving the looming problem
of food security.
Sections
Section 1: First 20 minutes introduction to the problem of agriculture in Malawi and the solution to the problem , Deep Bed Farming
Section 2: Next 23 minutes on what needs to be done so
that Malawi farmers have access to the solution.
Host: Sanjoy Sanyal, Founder Regain Paradise
Website www.regainparadise.org
Guest : Isaac Monjo Chavula, Country Director, Tiyeni
Kasonde Mulenga, Programme Manager, SIWI
Guests Website and contact
details. https://www.tiyeni.org/
82 episodes
Manage episode 398838662 series 2371188
Years of repeated tilling the same piece of land with a hand
hoe has compacted the soil in Malawi into a hard layer.
Plant roots cannot penetrate this “hard pan” and they grow
laterally, instead of vertically. Rainwater does not penetrate
the soil either but rushes along the furrows created in the
land, washing away the top soil. This is drastically reducing
agricultural production plummeting Malawi, whose
youthful population is dependent on agriculture, into crisis.
Climate crisis is making things worse. There are heavy
periods of rain, followed by dry spells and more frequent
cyclones. Standing crops are swept away and heavy rain
exacerbates soil erosion. Spells of drought makes plants,
already deprived of soil moisture, wither.
The solution is simple. Break down the hard pan of the soil.
Create deep beds and plant the crops there so that they are protected from storms. Rainwater seeps into the soil so that the soil has enough moisture during droughts. Tiyeni, a
local Malawi NGO has been training farmers on this
technique of “deep bed farming” for more than a decade.
They work with government extension workers who in turn
work with lead farmers who demonstrate these techniques
to other farmers.. Some of them have quadrupled their
yields. Tiyeni has worked with 30,000 farmers across the
county.
It does not cost too much money to train farmers. Isaac
Chavula feels that with about 450 million Malawian
Kwachas (less than US$ 300k) they can cover a lot of the
country. He also thinks it is a “lot of money”. That is
because funding for Tiyeni has been hard to come by – the
funding they get is from projects they do with universities
or companies. They are partnering with SIWI to raise the
profile of rainfed farming. Most of Sub-Saharan Africa’s
land is not irrigated. Governments have too little money to
invest in large irrigation projects. If all farmers in Malawi
could adopt deep bed farming, there may not be need to
spend a lot of money either in solving the looming problem
of food security.
Sections
Section 1: First 20 minutes introduction to the problem of agriculture in Malawi and the solution to the problem , Deep Bed Farming
Section 2: Next 23 minutes on what needs to be done so
that Malawi farmers have access to the solution.
Host: Sanjoy Sanyal, Founder Regain Paradise
Website www.regainparadise.org
Guest : Isaac Monjo Chavula, Country Director, Tiyeni
Kasonde Mulenga, Programme Manager, SIWI
Guests Website and contact
details. https://www.tiyeni.org/
82 episodes
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