Conservation Agriculture Woes, Part II

Agricultural methodologies that fail are often a result of inappropriateness. Not in the sense that the maize or fertilizer is indecent; rather, the fertilizer may not fit the soil, the seed may not fit the climate, the plant turns out to be the favorite food of the local entomology. Many of these are kind of the "Wow! Didn't see that coming." variety, and a decent project will assess and adapt.

The trying times, the ones that really grind your gears, are when mistakes that are totally avoidable are made. A case in point was this past week, when we got reports from about 35% of our conservation agriculture (CA) farmers that their fields had been inundated by the Zambezi's annual flooding. The key word in that past sentence is annual. You see, Western Province is dominated by the Barotse Floodplains (aka the Upper Zambezi Floodplains or buLozi [the place of Lozis]). From it's source near Ikelenge in Mwinilunga District to Lake Kariba the Zambezi flows without human impediment for nearly 500 miles. Consequently, given the unimodal rainfall cycle of Zambia (one distinct rainy season from November to April), that the Zambezi River annually fills the floodplains. The only exceptions are in dry years, such as 2000 or 2005, in which rainfall in the drainage was well below average.

Annual, annually, year-by-year, every year.

In our rush to get CA piloted this year, we allowed site selection to be carried out by our lead contact farmers in each of the six villages with little interference from us. I suspect that lack of interference was a combination of our being outsiders and us having "too many irons in the fire". I alluded in earlier posts that carrying out CA in the floodplains was problematic due to the amount of grass and for the fact that the soil is so rich that CA (conserving nutrients) doesn't really make a lot of sense. I neglected to mention the reasons why the grass is so thick and the soil so rich; plenty of water and silt deposition from ... guess what? ... annual flooding.

I'm not sure why these sites were selected by the lead farmers, who have lived their whole lives within a stone's throw of the floodplains and are consequently very aware of the floods. I'm guessing it's one of two reasons:

1. It could have been a gamble; cassava and pearl millet are planted in the sandy uplands (known locally as "the West Bank") due to their relatively light water and fertility needs. Maize and groundnuts, thirstier and hungrier crops that struggle in the uplands even during relatively wet years, thrive in the floodplain and provide a marketable commodity to the farmers. In a really dry year, they can even hedge against hunger when the millet and cassava performs poorly.
2. Building off #1, gambling is much easier when you're playing with other people's money. The farmers were given the inputs for their lima (0.25 hectares) by our agency; in all cases it was even delivered right to the villages. Though I'm not sure whether these were given freely or on a loan basis, my suspicion is the former; though in the latter case, in Zambia, a "loan" is pretty much a gift, given the history of repayment in this country.

I'm not bitter about this; the ideas and the selection preceded my arrival. However, what I'm seeing is that front-end training and hope for back-end results are simply not enough to carry a project through, i.e., "Do XYZ and the end result will justify the means." In agriculture development, the means are what need to be worked over repeatedly and hard.

Roland Bunch keeps ringing in my ears ... start slowly, start small, and be sure of success ... and don't plant maize in a floodplain.