Conservation agriculture Tanzania_casestudy.pdf - Sokoine ...

Alfred’s neighbour Cornel has been copying Alfred. Mrs Cornel saidWe knew how some of Alfred’s plots were degraded so we were surprised to see them backin high production. He explained the secret behind was planting lablab in rotation withwheat. He gave us seeds and we tried and it worked. In the area where we used to get twobags we got eight. However, lack of a special implement for planting wheat through thebiomass forced us to plough it under.Alfred has now converted 50% of his farm to conservation agriculture.Another farmer with four acres of lablab also explained the story of copying fromfellow farmers. Therefore, the pathway of conservation agriculture in the study areahas also been through farmer-to-farmer dissemination of knowledge and practices.Such dissemination has depended on the weather, availability of planting materials,implements, and certain practices the persons who want to copy must undertake.However, inappropriate documentation makes it difficult to tell precisely how manypeople have adopted the system.One of the resource-poor farmers, Mama Maria Erro, has been planting beansunder conservation agriculture using zero tillage and a jab planter. She started in2002, being motivated by the government through the Selian Agriculture ResearchInstitute, and has continued to date. She prepares the land by slashing then followswith applying herbicides if they are available. She leaves crop residues as soil cover.She uses the main (long) rain season, January–May, to plant maize, beans, pumpkin,lablab and mucuna. In the short rains, November–January, she plants beans andshort-term maize varieties. Because her landholding is small (3/4 of an acre), shehas never practised crop rotation.She has realized several benefits including reduced labour—she depends on herown family labour. The labour used in preparing the land (slashing, collecting trash,burning and starting to plant) has been reduced from nine workdays to two for slashingonly. Likewise planting labour has been reduced from four to two workdays.The few weeds that emerged were removed by uprooting or shallow weeding bypanga because the biomass obtained was not enough to provide permanent soilcover and prevent weeds. Observation showed just 10% of the soil was covered.9 Adaptation, adoption and diffusionLocal and international organizations have been responsible for introducingconservation agriculture technologies in the area. In 2004, FAO through CASARDapplied a more organized and coordinated way to introduce the full package ofconservation agriculture technologies through farmer field schools.AdaptationConservation agriculture adaptations in Karatu include changes farmers havemade in their practices in the standard recommendations to suit their local socio-86 Ringo et al.