Rain

Happy Boxing Day.

It didn't rain yesterday or last night, or since Tuesday. I was hoping for a bit of a soak ... I planted the next round of Faidherbia albida trees yesterday, as well as some cowpeas [Vigna unguiculata], roselle [Hibiscus sabdariffa], and bambara nuts [Vigna subterranea] nuts.

To be perfectly honest, I am fearing that a repeat of the 2004 - 2005
season might happen here. I'm unaware of the rest of the country, but
we have only really had two decent rains since I got here on Nov. 18th.
What other rain we've had is patchy; you can watch the storms dance
past like dancing revelers, sending ephemeral curtains of rain
everywhere but where you need it. It's only slightly maddening.

We are seeing some effects of the dryness; we've gotten reports that
grasshoppers have torn up many farmers' cowpeas, likely a result of
them being the only green, juicy thing in the field (the bean leaves are
quite tasty). That's bad enough; we've been promoting the cowpeas
for food security, more protein, etc. What's worse is that we're now
hearing that the grasshoppers are moving onto the groundnuts
[peanuts]. A lousy harvest of those and our peanut butter venture
becomes somewhat extraneous. We've informed the Ministry of
Agriculture and Cooperatives (MACO) about the issue and delivered
some grasshoppers to them two weeks ago; so far, no response.

Whenever you talk about agriculture, particularly rain-fed
agriculture, you have to recognize what sort of gamble a farmer
undertakes. I took a number of classes on soil science at Wisconsin,
and we learned about something called the "Law of the Minimums";
put simply, it is the idea that yield of any given crop can only reach the
level allowed by the most limited nutrient. So even if you dump a
billion tons of nitrogen on your crop, a phosphorus, potassium, or other
nutrient can prevent that nitrogen from doing anything. Well, rain the
limiting factor and the one that you can do the least about. A year with
little rain and you can pretty much kiss your crops goodbye. Irrigation
isn't really an option; we don't have the infrastructure to irrigate
anything larger than a quarter-hectare, and that itself is only possible
on the narrow seepage along the Zambezi River. As a farmer, you
simply look at the sky, wait, and pray.

There's so much more that could be said, particularly the preference
for thirsty / hungry maize over more drought-resistant, lower-feeder
indigenous crops (e.g. millet or sorghum); but that's a subject of some
chapters or a lifetime.