Project Highlight: Improving Togo's Soils--Fertilizer Experiment

While projects are only the fraction of our work as a Peace Corps volunteer, I have learned a lot and gained many new friendships through my work in my community. As a result, I wanted to dedicate a few posts to some of the projects I am working on in my community. These projects are ongoing, and the process is often messy and far from perfect, but I feel that I and my community have gained a lot from these projects, even if it's not always in the way we initially imagined.

In this post, I will be highlighting my soil project in my community. We started discussing this project last January and started the process in February. So as you can see things take a while to implement here... especially when the projects are dependent on the seasons.

Side note: this story was also submitted to the Peace Corps as a report of some of my work at site. I thought I might as well share with all of you as well.

Within the first six months in my community, I had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of time in the fields, working alongside community members. This valuable time in the fields allowed me to build relationships within my community, as well as experience firsthand some of the challenges farmers face in the field. Farming in Togo is labor intensive, still dominated by handheld tools and human force. This, alongside challenging work conditions such as far walking distances, rocky soils, and low yields, makes farming extremely arduous and sometimes unprofitable in Togo.

Through my time spent in the fields and talking to farmers, I learned that poor soil conditions were often the stem of most of the farmers’ challenges. The once rich soils had been depleted from years of growing nutrient intense crops without replenishing the soils with organic matter and natural fertilizers. In recent years, farmers have favorized chemical fertilizers such as NPK and Urea because they are easy to apply and produce quick results pertaining to crop growth. However, these fertilizers do not replenish other key soil characteristics essential for healthy crops and healthy soils. Over time, the soils became more and more depleted, requiring greater quantities of chemical fertilizers, which are relatively expensive, to sustain the same yields. Additionally, farmers are aware of the negative effects chemicals have on the environment and human health, making them eager to learn about more natural sources of fertilizers.

After meeting with already existing farming groups and hosting a few community meetings of my own, community members and I agreed that improving soil health and quality should be a priority project in the community. The next step in project planning was consulting local leaders. I met with the chief of our local canton, as well as the local chiefs of the villages that made up my community to share what I had learned and our proposed next steps. With their support and encouragement, I contacted my ICAT supervisor and local agent to arrange an experimental plot on their land allotted for agricultural training and experimentation. ICAT stands for “Institut de Conseil et d’Appui Technique”; it is a department within the Togolese government tasked with agricultural development and supporting local farmers through training and sharing of information and resources.

With the support of local leaders and governmental personnel, I was given about a quarter hectare of land to experiment with different forms of organic fertilizers. A group of about 15 farmers and I created a plan to create and apply several different organic fertilizers on plots of maize to experiment with the processes and outcomes of the new techniques. During the dry season, we created a compost pile composed of dry and green plant material, animal manure, and water. After about three months of consistent watering and turning the pile on a weekly basis, our compost was mature and ready to use in the field. We also concocted a liquid fertilizer, using similar ingredients: green plant material, animal manure, water, and several shovels full of ash and soil. This fertilizer was ready after 2 weeks of guarding away from the sun and stirring daily.

When the rainy season began, the farmers and I headed out to the field to clear our plot of land and section it into quarters to experiment with four different fertilization techniques: apply manure and compost in the early growing stage; spraying filtered and diluted liquid fertilizer on a weekly to biweekly basis; planting Mucuna, a local nitrogen fixing crop among the corn at the beginning of the reproductive stage; and applying traditional chemical fertilizers (NPK 15-15-15 and Urea 46% N). Due to the challenges of roaming animals and their affinity for Mucuna, we decided to also incorporate an agroforestry technique into our project by planting a living fence around the Mucuna plot to protect from browsing cattle. The living fence consisted of Gliricida sepium cuttings, a fast-growing nitrogen fixing plant often used in the subtropics as a living fence, and Jatropha curcas, a native nitrogen fixing plant already grown as a hedge in the area.

Two weeks after dividing up the plots, making lines by hand, and planting corn using the recommended spacing of 40x80 cm, we applied our compost at the base of the corn in one plot, applied NPK in another, planted our living fence around the future Mucuna plot, and sprayed our first application of the liquid fertilizer using a backpack sprayer. Throughout the growing season, the field was regularly maintained: the plots were regularly weeded, we completed the binage (mounding the corn to protect its shallow roots), we applied Urea to the traditional fertilizer plot after 35 days, we regularly sprayed liquid fertilizer at the base of the corn and then the entire plant once the corn was more mature, and we planted Mucuna after 60 days when the corn was in the doe stage.

As the corn has developed, the health and development in each plot has become noticeably different. While the compost plot and chemical fertilizer plot both started off strong in the first 4-6 weeks of growth, the chemical fertilizer plot surpassed the compost plot after the application of Urea, and the compost plot began to show signs of nitrogen deficiency as it did not receive a second application of compost. The Mucuna and liquid fertilizer plot started off slow, with considerably smaller and more yellowish plants. Mucuna was planted after the corn’s critical growing stage, and the liquid fertilizer appeared to be relatively ineffective. While some might see the project to promote organic fertilizers as a failure because the chemical fertilizer plot has been the most successful thus far, I see the project as highly beneficial and informative despite not producing the result I originally hoped for.

Here are the key takeaways I have learned from the project so far:

· The full benefits of Mucuna are often not seen until after three consecutive years of planting it in your field. As a result, I recommended to farmers to continue to apply other fertilizers alongside the Mucuna in the first 2-3 years to avoid decreases in crop yields when transitioning to a new fertilizer technique.

· Building compost is laborious and time-intensive, but it is a more holistic organic fertilizer that will add crucial organic matter to the soil over time. While compost provided adequate nutrients in the early stages of crop development, it should be supplemented with Urea in the first few years of application, as it became evident the soil lacked adequate nitrogen to support full crop growth and development.

· Liquid fertilizer piqued the interest of a lot of farmers due to its ease in fabrication. However, the application is more frequent and time intensive. Additionally, the liquid fertilizer is not applied at a great enough quantity to be truly effective, and frequent rains can decrease the efficacy of the applications. Because the liquid fertilizer showed no difference with the plot that received no fertilizer until the reproductive stage, I propose ruling out liquid fertilizer as an effective fertilizing technique for corn and other cereal crops.

· The living fence has progressed throughout the rainy season, but not at the pace I anticipated. Realistically, it will take two years to establish an effective living fence that can protect from roaming animals. Planting Gliricida sepium as a cutting supports faster plant growth, but the survival rate is lower. Therefore, I would suggest acquiring more cuttings than were initially needed for your perimeter to replace those that do not take. Additionally, installing your living fence should be the first task completed in the field as it will be more permanent (up to 20-30 years) than your annual crops. Therefore, you want to base your spacing and lines off the fence.

· Finally, during this growing season, we experienced abnormal precipitation patterns with the several long dry periods during critical growth stages. This delayed certain field activities, negatively impacted crop growth and development, and will no doubt have an impact on crop yields and the outcomes of the project.

While the project has not produced the outcomes I had originally hoped for, the entire experience has still been extremely beneficial and informative for both me and the farmers involved. Approaching the project as an experiment more than a demonstration has allowed me and the farmers to remain open-minded and optimistic. Using land allotted to ICAT for experimentation rather than asking farmers to give up their own land for the project has taken away some of the pressure and stress of certain techniques failing, especially in an already challenging year for farmers. We have already learned so much from the project, and I look forward to discussing with the farmers what we have learned and what we want to take with us moving forward after our harvest.

The experience has also been extremely beneficial to me as a volunteer. I have learned how to mobilize people and resources in my community to start and maintain a project. I have gained valuable experience growing corn in a local context, and I have learned the challenges of planning and implementing projects in the field. I hope to take this experience with me after my service to aid me in my future work.

Figure 1: Map of experimental plot