Restoring the Soil - Canadian Foodgrains Bank

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Restoring the SoiliiAcknowledgementsThis book could never have been written if it were not for a handful of people whohad the foresight to realize, 30 years ago, that sometime soon, the world demand forenergy would outstrip the supply, and energy prices would increase dramatically. Furthermore,they knew that a major increase in energy prices would inevitably increasethe price of chemical fertilizer, which would, in turn, mean that over a billion peoplearound the world who were dependent on chemical fertilizer would have no known,economically feasible way of maintaining their soil’s fertility. These people’s predictionscould not have been more accurate: energy prices have increased five-fold overthe last decade, real fertilizer prices have doubled in less than five years, world foodprices have soared and millions of smallholder farmers are watching their soils becomerather similar to infertile bricks.But due to the foresight of this handful of people, we now have a large selection ofeffective, very inexpensive alternatives to chemical fertilizer. Thousands of people haveworked on green manure/cover crops over the last 30 years, but the pioneers and leadersin this effort are fairly well-known:• Ana Primavesi has been the pioneer and theoretical leader of the entire Brazilianzero tillage and green manure/cover crop movement. Her classic book, TheEcological Management of the Soil, still has no rival worthy of the name.• Claudio Monegat probably did more than anyone else to further the earlyexperimentation with green manure/cover crops in Brazil. He later wrote his ownclassic, Green Manuring in Southern Brazil.• Valdemar Hercilio (Salgado) de Freitas and Aldemir Calegari have headed upthe state agricultural organizations for the Brazilian states of Santa Catarina andParana, where most of the early green manure/cover crop work was done in Braziland where over a million farmers now regularly use green manure/cover crops.• Rolf Derpsch worked with the movement in Brazil for many years, and thenspread it to much of Paraguay.• Steve Gliessman and Roberto Garcia did pioneering work with jackbeans on theYucatan Peninsula in Mexico.• In 1983, within a year or two of the time the Brazilians initiated their work ongreen manure/cover crops, those of us in World Neighbors/Honduras beganexperimenting with half a dozen green manure/cover crop species.• Milton Flores became the director in 1989 of the International Green Manure/Cover Crop Clearinghouse (CIDICCO), which was founded by World Neighbors/Honduras.He ably ran CIDICCO for two decades, spreading informationabout green manure/cover crops to more than 75 countries around the world.In addition to these pioneers, I would like to thank the members of the GreenManure/Cover Crop Taskforce organized by the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB)
iiiRestoring the Soilwho recognized the need to have this book written. Dr. Tom Post and Dr. WondimuKenea from World Renew (formerly Christian Reformed World Relief Committee)first captured the vision of this book. They also came up with the crucial idea ofbuilding the book around a decision tree, so that the often difficult and complicatedtask of choosing among scores of green manure/cover crop systems could be simplifiedfor the common practitioner. Dawn Berkelaar from ECHO Inc. has done an incrediblejob of editing the book, simplifying technical language where it was needed, andmaking sure, against all odds, that all the numbers in the text actually do correspondto the numbers in our latest version of the decision tree. Dr. Tim Motis from ECHOassisted in editing and adding a valuable seed resources section. Additional help inediting was provided by Philip Bender, Carol Thiessen, Rachel Evans, Tiffany Hiebert,Emily Cain, and John Longhurst. Lastly, this book would definitely not exist if AldenBraul from CFGB had not initiated the idea and pushed this project forward to itscompletion.Roland Bunch
Page 3: A timely and extremely valuable boo
Page 10 and 11: Restoring the SoilivHow To Use This
Page 12 and 13: 2the best of my knowledge, only two
Page 14 and 15: 4The Definition of Green Manure/Cov
Page 16 and 17: 6A Brief History of Green Manure/Co
Page 18 and 19: 8Existing Green Manure/Cover Croppi
Page 20 and 21: 10Existing Green Manure/Cover Cropp
Page 28 and 29: 18Improving Soils: The Basic RulesF
Page 30 and 31: 20Choosing The Right GM/CC Cropping
Page 38 and 39: 28Using The Decision Treewhich has
Page 40 and 41: 30Decision Tree7. Decision TreeIntr
Page 42 and 43: 32Decision Tree13.What isthe domina
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Page 46 and 47: 36Decision Tree Guidewho work in ag
Page 48 and 49: 38Decision Tree Guide12. Altitude a
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Page 52 and 53: 42Decision Tree GuideLeucaena trees
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Page 56 and 57: 46Decision Tree Guide25. Honduras.
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48Decision Tree Guidec) Pigeon peas
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50Decision Tree Guideeties should n
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52Decision Tree Guidenot dry-season
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54Decision Tree Guideat least once,
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Annex 1: Glossary of Agricultural T
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Annex 2: The Evidence79Annex 2: The
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Annex 2: The Evidence81The Amount o
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Annex 2: The Evidence83this level o
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Annex 2: The Evidence85content of a
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Annex 3: List of Recommended Green
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Annex 3: List of Recommended Green
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Annex 4: Seed Sources for Green Man
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Annex 4: Seed Sources for Green Man
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Roland Bunch has worked in agricult
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Restoring the Soil - Canadian Foodgrains Bank

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