Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM)

Photo credit: The Guardian

From dust bowl to bread basket: digging the dirt on soil erosion

by Caspar van Vark

Pinpointed by Heriberto Lopez

Poor soil quality has seen agricultural productivity in Africa decline when it drastically needs to increase. Will 2015’s International Year of Soils help?

EXCERPT

A recent report on conserving, restoring and enhancing Africa’s soils recommends a holistic approach to soil management called Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM). This includes adding organic matter such as crop residues and manure into the soil, applying small (and therefore affordable) amounts of mineral fertilisers and planting legume crops such as cowpea that naturally deposit nitrogen into the soil.

SHP has taught farmers about these methods via 130,000 demonstrations in 13 countries over the past five years. “The demos are on farmers’ land, school fields, churchyards or roadsides,” says Jama. “One plot might have little or no inputs, with a second plot showing the microdosing of fertiliser – very small amounts placed in the planting hole, along with manure – and another plot might have legumes where, in the next season, they can put sorghum where previously they had legumes.”

These methods have yielded results. In Ghana 117,000 participating farmers have seen maize yields increase from 1.5 to 3.5 tonnes per hectare. In Malawi, yields have risen from 2 to 4.6 tonnes.

Read the full article: The Guardian