There are mangos...and then there are mangos! Saturday, May 14, 2011
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Foundations for Farming
About one month ago, Pastor Marc Deolo, head of CECU’s PEASIT program (AIDS Education, Prevention and Treatment), attended a training in Zimbabwe with Foundations for Farming (formerly Farming God’s Way). He attended with the hope of implementing their farming methods here in Congo as a way to help people with AIDS provide for themselves. He also got directive from the CECU leadership to spread what he had learned when he got back that it might be of benefit to the church as a whole. When he got back he connected with me and we began making plans for getting the news out. I had been aware of Foundations for Farming for some time and was excited at the opportunity to try it out.
Foundations for Farming represents a new way of doing subsistence (or commercial) farming in Sub-Saharan Africa. It takes a look at the symptoms of slow agricultural growth and declining yields on the continent and diagnoses the problem: us. We are farming in such a way that we are not taking care of the soil as though it were our inheritance. We burn. We plow. And when the soil is used up we abandon it and move on. The Foundations for Farming method is an effort to make the work that happens in the field more in line with how God plants; that is, no burning and no plowing. It promotes a system approach in which weeding, composting and mulching play a big role. Individual planting stations are prepared in straight rows and planted in year after year after year. This method has a lot of potential and it will be exciting to see what happens with it here in Congo.
We started by planting cowpeas in a field next to the CECU mission. There were several attendees and we all played a very participatory role in the process, from laying out the field, to digging the holes, to planting and adding mulch in between rows.
Foundations for Farming represents a new way of doing subsistence (or commercial) farming in Sub-Saharan Africa. It takes a look at the symptoms of slow agricultural growth and declining yields on the continent and diagnoses the problem: us. We are farming in such a way that we are not taking care of the soil as though it were our inheritance. We burn. We plow. And when the soil is used up we abandon it and move on. The Foundations for Farming method is an effort to make the work that happens in the field more in line with how God plants; that is, no burning and no plowing. It promotes a system approach in which weeding, composting and mulching play a big role. Individual planting stations are prepared in straight rows and planted in year after year after year. This method has a lot of potential and it will be exciting to see what happens with it here in Congo.
We started by planting cowpeas in a field next to the CECU mission. There were several attendees and we all played a very participatory role in the process, from laying out the field, to digging the holes, to planting and adding mulch in between rows.
That was April 7th. This is what the cowpeas look like now.
We also incorporated a Foundations for Farming lesson and practical into the classes at ELIKYA. A 10 x 6m plot of corn was planted exactly one week ago.
This Thursday we will be planting soy and continuing the training with a handpicked group of CECU development leaders in the area. We will be training every Thursday and hope to expand the training in late June or July, right on time for the next round of planting before the rains diminish in October.
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