Two weeks ago at the Fankanta demonstration farm we were busy planting out a large swath in upland rice. Upland rice is rice that does not need to be grown in a flooded paddy. This particular variety comes from further south in Senegal. One of the association members brought back some seed from his mother's village. Apparently farmers in this village still have not come into contact with urea fertilizer. Instead these farmers use mostly animal manure. I was told though that there is no horse manure as tsetse flies in this region transmit nagana (a parasite) which kills horses.
Luckily there are no tsetse flies this far north in Senegal!
Below you can see the beds just before the rice was planted, and then two weeks later.
Here is Sadibou using an ilere, a combination shovel/hoe to make ridges (pints in Wolof) around all the beds. You could say it is the spork of farming tools. Though at first, using it was a bit like trying to eat with chopsticks for the first time. The metal blade can be used to move small amounts of soil when held as in the picture. But, if the ilere is held further toward the end of its handle, it can be pushed back and forth across the ground, cutting weeds down in the sandy soil.
As water is very precious here most farmers grow in beds that have raised ridges like Sadibou is making here. This ensures that water stays in the beds and does not run off into the pathways. Watering here is done almost exclusively with watering cans which can take quite a long time. This is another reason why it's helpful to make sure the water stays in the bed. The less water that runs off into the pathways the less one has to walk back and forth to the well with their watering cans.
As water is very precious here most farmers grow in beds that have raised ridges like Sadibou is making here. This ensures that water stays in the beds and does not run off into the pathways. Watering here is done almost exclusively with watering cans which can take quite a long time. This is another reason why it's helpful to make sure the water stays in the bed. The less water that runs off into the pathways the less one has to walk back and forth to the well with their watering cans.
Rice is a staple of the Senegalese diet yet most of it is imported from India, Thailand, or South America. Lamine is hoping to show that local rice production is feasible and worthwhile with the organic upland rice we are growing. Below you can see an example of one of the 50 kg sacs the rice comes in. Every bag of rice I have seen so far and every meal I have eaten has been "Brissures de riz" or broken rice peices.
Our community composting program just started up last week. Right now we're just targeting the local market. Each day a horse cart brings the food scraps from the market to the demonstration farm. Here is Lamine painting the initials of the Association Grow Biointensif onto the container we provide the market.
The pile is getting bigger every day. Right now it ranges between 115 and 125 degrees F depending on how old the scraps are. We're excited about getting some finished product out to farmers. The soil here is extremely sandy and this compost could do wonders for soil fertility and moisture retention. Farmers here rely heavily on urea fertilizer and pesticides. Urea is certainly effective at delivering nitrogen to plants, but there are many other nutrients that plants need and over time the urea acidifies the soil. It becomes a cycle where the plants recieve poor nutrition, they become more susceptible to pest pressures as a result, and then farmers are forced to use pesticides and fungicides which further damage soil health and the ability of plants to access the nutrients they need. People here are curious about alternatives to urea and pesticides though. Cow and chicken manure is definitely in use, but I'm hoping that the compost will prove to be a more easily accesible resource in addition to being more beneficial to soil health.
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