Conservation Agriculture heralds new dawn

Pioneering no-till farming brings dramatic results to villagers who had always struggled to realise meaningful produce on their pieces of land

By Tsitsi Matope

BEREA- After 20 years of toiling in the South African mines, Mr Thabang Mokone finally called it a day in 1994, returning to his rural home in Ha ‘Mamathe, Berea District.

The father-of-six had now hoped to sustain his family through agriculture, yet it was to be the beginning of a nightmare for Mokone who had not been able to build a strong foundation in life, despite his two decades labouring in some of the most challenging working environments on earth.

Mokone told Public Eye this week he had earned a paltry R800 per month for many years, which he pointed out had not been enough to support both his family and meaningful agriculture back home.

As a result, when he returned home, Mokone said his family was struggling to produce enough food on their small piece of land.

“The situation was extremely dire; we went from bad to worse because when I quit my job, we no longer had anything to look forward to because the salary wasn’t coming anymore,” Mokone said.

His only hope, Mokone said, was still in the soil, despite it having failed the family for close to 10 years.

His family had only been able to realise 60kg of maize grain from their one hectare—a miserable yield that lasted two months or so.

Desperate and despondent, Mokone could only foresee doom for his family, and every day, would pray for a miracle to happen.

The miracle was soon to come in 2005 when the Rehobothe Church informed Mokone and other followers it had partnered with government through a Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations initiative.

“I was a desperate man and would have accepted any intervention. I became part of the team that was soon to be taught about Conservation Agriculture (minimum mechanical soil disturbance through no-till farming, which is essential to maintaining minerals within the soil, stopping erosion, and preventing water loss from occurring within the soil).”

Under the programme, Mokone received seed and fertiliser from FAO in 2005, as well as training on Basin Conservation Agriculture (or Likoti in SeSotho).

 “Unlike in the previous years, I did not plough my land, but only used a hoe to dig holes in which I would plant the seeds.”

He recalls some neighbours who saw him and his family practicing this type of farming mocked and laughed at them.

“To them, it was a strange way of farming,” he reminisces.

Mokone said that same year, his maize harvest shot-up from 60kg to an incredible 340kg.

“Because of the good spacing and many other new practices of Conservation Farming we had adopted, the maize cobs were also much bigger. And overnight, the food situation at home had dramatically improved.”

Mokone said the interventions helped him realise he could still improve his yield if he kept enhancing the Conservation Agriculture to include crop-rotation and intercropping with beans, in order to boost the soil’s nitrogen content.

In 2010, Mokone’s maize production from the same piece of land went up to 800kg and this year, the now-bubbly farmer says he expects an even higher yield.

“I have seen that high production is not only determined by the size of your land, but also the farming method that you adopt.”

Mokone has since diversified production on his land to include horticulture.  

“I am using the same concept to grow a wide variety of vegetables, which I sell to local communities.”

Mokone said it was amazing the same strip of land he had thought was too small to yield anything meaningful, was now producing a lot of maize and vegetables that brought him up to M300 per month.

“I have seen the huge benefits of this type of farming and I hope with continued help, I will be able to utilise my four hectares of land, which have been lying fallow for years.”

Working closely with experts from FAO, Mokone has also started training farmers from his village and expanded the empowerment to other villages such as Ha Ntebele, Ha Mosethe and Ha Lenea.

“I would like to help advocate for Conservation Agriculture as the only way to alleviate poverty in this area,” he said.

His advocacy has already started to pay-off in his village, where some of his neighbours had laughed-him-off when he started practicing Conservation Agriculture.

Mrs Mabota Piti (pictured), a mother-of-four-children, told Public Eye although her husband was working in the mines, his income was not enough to sustain the family.

Mrs Piti also said her husband stretched his salary to meet the demands of his extended family.

Just like his own family, the extended family had also been battling to produce enough food to put on the table, she said.

As a result, Piti said she had been left with no other option but to work hard, hoping to produce enough from their small piece of land.

For the past decade, she has grown maize on the piece of land around her home, but what she realised only filled a few pots of green mealies, Piti said.

Her hard work, it was apparent, was failing to pay off.

“The little money I got from my husband would buy maize-meal and other foodstuffs because we failed to come up with good yields,” she said.

Last year, Piti decided to turn over a new leaf to save her struggling family.

“I decided to ask for help from Mr Mokone after seeing how well his maize and vegetables were doing. He introduced me to Conservation Agriculture before I received some inputs from FAO.”

In 2010, Piti adopted Conservation Agriculture and said she was optimistic this year, there would be no need to buy maize-meal from the supermarket.

“My husband was shocked when he got home; we have never had so much maize before,” she said.

On the other hand, Mokone—who is leading the training of his fellow villagers—said for years, the community had been concerned about the vulnerability of families such as those headed by children, widowers and widows.

Most of these families, he said, had no means of engaging in systematic agriculture and had to survive on working in other people’s fields for a meal, among other odd jobs.

But last year, FAO decided to take the project to another level by giving priority to vulnerable families.

Yet it was not easy to understand the benefits of Conservation Agriculture for some villagers, among them Mrs Mampho Tlale.

A widow, Tlale doubted the effectiveness of Conservation Farming and only adopted it on one part of her farm, while using the conventional way of farming on the other.

Today, Tlale wishes she had practiced Conservation Agriculture throughout her plot.

“The difference between the crops is so shocking, to say the least,” Tlale said.

Tlale said not only did she waste seed and fertilizer, but also her time working on a crop whose yield turned out poorly.

Meanwhile, according to the FAO representative in Lesotho, Mr Attaher Maiga, approximately 67 farmers in Ha ‘Mamathe were now practicing Conservation Agriculture.

However, he said a lot of land still remained unutilised in the area last year, with some villagers seemingly still preferring subsistence farming.

Mr Maiga said: “We are working closely with the government to introduce various strategies that would help boost agricultural production in different parts of Lesotho.

“Through financial support from the European Union Food Facility, close to M1,4million has been injected into Conservation Agriculture in Berea and Botha-Bothe districts.

“The idea behind supporting this technology is to ensure that farmers increase their yields and therefore, enhance the country’s food security. This would be based on improved soil health and management.”

Maiga noted climate change had impacted negatively on the environment and the country’s food production, whose agriculture is largely rain-fed.

He said due to climate change, most parts of Lesotho continued to lose both fertility and top soil due to soil erosion, hence the appropriateness of Conservation Agriculture.

Maiga emphasised the need to ensure food security was a key priority owing to food prices, which continued on an upward trend.

Increasing locally-produced food and also diversifying production, he said, would ensure affordability for many families.

“This would also help address challenges around nutrition among children and vulnerable families,” he said. 

Explaining how the conservation agriculture technology works, FAO Emergency Coordinator, Ms Farayi Zimudzi said the concept was based on three principles.

These, she said, ensured there was minimal soil disturbance, use of soil cover either in the forms of cover crops or mulch and crop rotation.

 “By adopting these principles, soil erosion is reduced, while nutrients are replenished and soil moisture retained. Science has proved that this makes the soil much healthier and more productive,” Zimudzi said.

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