The Coming Droughts

Agricultural Techniques Green Manure and Cover Crops
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Dear ECHO Community,
We would like to share recent recommendations by GMCC global expert and author, Roland Bunch amid a season of severe drought in many parts of the world:

We can never be sure ahead of time, but there are important indications (such as this year’s El Nino, which was the worst in history) that this year Africa may suffer from the worst drought it has ever experienced! And Latin America may also experience one of its worst droughts in years. We can’t be sure of this in either case, but we should definitely be as prepared as we possibly can be, because according to the United Nations, ten or twenty million people in Africa could die because of this year’s drought.

As a result, I have decided to write many of you people I have gotten to know with what could be the best ways to deal with this drought. As most of you know, I have had over 40 years’ experience of visiting smallholder farmers’ fields in some 80 nations, working with green manure/cover crops (gm/ccs). These are plants that fertilize the soil and over a period of four or five years, can actually end the droughts for farmers that use them correctly. Most of these systems were developed by smallholder farmers themselves, years or even centuries before we professionals began learning about them. I have now seen that there are thousands of farmers in each of eight different nations (Honduras, Brazil, Mali, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Madagascar and Vietnam), who have totally overcome the droughts–permanently. Their fields are often producing 3 tons to 4 tons per hectare of maize during droughts when the neighboring fields of farmers who have not used gm/ccs are producing just a few kilos per hectare.

So here is what I think your farmers should do this year. They should not do one thing on all of your land, but try out the recommendations below on one or more trial plots of about 20 meters by 20 meters.

  1. If you own a plot of land that is basically forest—has lots of trees, of whatever species—this may be by far the best thing you can do (in this case, I would do this on all the land that has trees on it, because it will hardly ever suffer from a drought, just as natural forests never suffer from droughts). Trim the branches of all the trees with the branches near the ground being cut off completely, and then gradually, as one moves upward toward the sky, leaving the branches a little longer and a little longer, until the top branches, if possible, reach about half way to the tips of the nearest tree’s pruned branches. In this way, every spot of ground will get sunlight part of the day, but only where the trees are just growing too far apart will your crops get sunlight more than about 4 or 5 hours each day. This means that most of the time, the ground, and the crops on it, will be shaded, and therefore will not dry out nearly as much as those growing all day long in the hot sun. The crops under these pruned trees can grow very well with only 5 hours of sunlight a day. Under these trees, you should be able to grow maize, but maybe half the land under these trees you should intercrop pigeon peas or lablab beans in your maize. These two gm/ccs produce a good deal of very nutritious seeds and leaves, some of which are available any time of the year, so you can avoid even having a hunger season.

  2. If you have already been using gm/ccs, you are lucky. Keep on using them, pretty much as you already have. But if your pigeon peas are in their fourth year, ratoon them again and let them live for a fifth year, just as you have the first four years. This is because even though fifth year pigeon peas do not normally produce as well as they do the first four years, in a serious drought, the pigeon peas will produce a good deal better in their fifth year than if they are starting from seed.

  3. If you have not used gm/ccs at all, probably the only green manure/cover crop that will manage to grow very well at all during this drought will be the jack bean. Normally, you can grow the jack bean with three plants each square meter intercropped with maize, but during this drought, you should probably grow only one plant of jack bean per square meter, because if three plants are intercropped with the maize, it may reduce somewhat the maize yield, and you will need every bit of maize you can get. You may even have to plant the jack bean all alone on the worst soil, where you already know the maize won’t grow in a droughty year. This jack bean should make your soil more drought-proof in future years, but also, if you have almost nothing to eat, you can eat the young green pods. They should not be eaten if you have enough other food available, but if you are suffering from lack of food, eating these jack bean pods is a whole lot better than going without food, or eating a lot less food than you should.

  4. Of course, the surest thing to ensure you have enough food is to plant sorghum, or even better, cassava, instead of maize. Granted, most people don’t like to eat cassava or sorghum nearly as much as maize, but cassava will produce a good amount of food during almost any drought. Furthermore, it is very easy to intercrop jack beans with the cassava, so that after just one year, or maybe two, you can go back to growing maize—also with an intercrop.

  5. In all of the above cases, you should, starting right now in August, gather as many leaves from the environment as you can, especially if they are from leguminous trees like gliricidia or piliostigma (often called the “cow’s hoof” tree or the “ox-hoof” tree because the leaves have two points on them instead of just one). Mix these leaves with animal manure and, if possible, some compost, and spread them on the ground around your crops in order to form a mulch. It would probably be best to use these mostly on the plots you feel will produce the best, because that way they will probably bring about the best possible increases in production.

And please, if you know other people who are working with smallholder farmers, send these papers to them, so they, too, can help their farmers survive these awful droughts.

I wish you all good luck in overcoming this drought!

All the best, Roland Bunch

Roland has permitted ECHO to share and make available his important publications for overcoming droughts (see below):

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