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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Br. Paul's Organic Cotton and Vegetable Farm
  • Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 07:28:55 -0700

This article can be found on the I-SIS website at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BrPaulsOrganicFarm.php
========================================================


ISIS Press Release 04/11/05

Br. Paul's Organic Cotton and Vegetable Farm
***********************************
Jesuit brother breaks all the rules he learned in agricultural college, and
shows how to bring food security to the world
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

Organic cotton is possible and highly profitable

Brother Paul Desmarais of the Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre of Lusaka
in Zambia is a happy man. He has just demonstrated that cotton can be grown
organically, and furthermore, at yields up to more than twice the national
average. That is quite an achievement as cotton is notorious for consuming
the most agrochemicals of any crop, some 21 percent of that consumed
worldwide; and most people have been led to believe that cotton cannot be
grown without chemical sprays.

“I am confident that anyone can grow cotton organically in Zambia”, says Br.
Paul, beaming from ear to ear. You need to do only two things: increase the
fertility of the soil with organic matter, and put extra local plant species
into the cotton fields to control insect pests.”

Plants that are sick or doing poorly will be the first to succumb to insect
pests; so keeping a crop healthy with fertile soil reduces insect attacks.
The species inter-planted with the cotton crop are those that attract pests
away from the cotton crop or beneficial predators, or provide home for
beneficial predators; many species serving both purposes. For example,
munsale (sweet sorghum) attracts bollworm and aphids as well as a host of
beneficial insects; nyemba (cowpeas) provides a habitat and food source for
ants and predatory wasps, and also attracts the pests leafhoppers, aphids and
bollworms; sanyembe (sunhemp) is highly attractive to beneficial insects as a
border crop and controls nematodes as well. Delele (okra) attracts bollworms,
caterpillars and leaf eaters; milisi (maize) traps aphids on tassels and
bollworms; mupilu (mustard) attracts beneficial hover flies and parasitic
wasps as well as aphids on which they feed. Malanga (sunflower) attracts
bollworm moths to lay eggs, and the beneficial lacewings that feed on aphids.
A horizontal row containing a mixture of all these were planted for every 20
rows of cotton in the field bordered by sunnhemp on two sides. A host of
other species can be planted, adding to the diversity of the farm. A variety
of trees, such as Sesbania , Leucaena , and other indigenous species can act
as windbreaks and provide habitat for farmers' friends and provide material
for composting and making teas.

The experiments started in 2003/04, planted in the Kasisi Centre, and in
farmers' fields in Chongwe district (see Table 1). The yields are calculated
per 0.25 ha in the first instance to make the different size plots
comparable. The two grades were from one harvest and refers to the quality of
the cotton, The cotton companies pay more for grade A and less for grade B,
and still less for grade C. The yield in KATC was twice the national average.
Good yields were also obtained in the farmers' plots in Lusoke and Mulalika.
In Old Kasenga and Ndubulula, the poor yields were due to insufficient weed
control and late planting respectively.

For tables, please see http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BrPaulsOrganicFarm.php

The economics of organic cotton from the KATC was compared with that of
conventional cotton in the villages (Table 2). As can be seen, the net profit
from organic production was more than twice that of conventional. The organic
plots not only gave higher yield in the main cotton crop, they also provided
harvests from the inter-planted species that could be sold.

The input costs for the organic plots were higher due to the extra labour and
costs of preparing composts and manure teas. Less cottonseed is used in the
organic fields due to inter-planting, but the yield was still higher. If the
cotton were sold on the organic market, it would fetch a premium and increase
income still further for the household.

For tables, please see http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BrPaulsOrganicFarm.php

In the following year, 2004/05, only grade A cotton was harvested. The yields
went down because of the poor rainy season (see Table 2); but they were still
better than the conventional national average for that year, which was 580
kg/ha. The seed cotton was tested for staple length, strength, etc., and the
results were slightly better than most conventionally grown seed cotton
samples. So even with the lower prices paid that year (as market price had
gone down), farmers were still able to record a profit because of the lower
input costs.

For tables, please see http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BrPaulsOrganicFarm.php

Organic vegetables that increased in yield year by year

Kasisi has actually been growing organic vegetables several years before, and
the results are even more stunning. Land was contracted out to a company
which started growing in 2000, the organic yields were 40 to 60 percent those
of conventionally grown crops, but increased in successive years while those
of convention crops decreased. By 2004, the organics were out-yielding the
conventionals by 2 to 3 fold (see Table 4).

For tables, please see http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BrPaulsOrganicFarm.php

While yield increased year by year under organic management, production costs
decreased (Table 5), partly on account of setting up costs during the first
year, such as liming and rock phosphate amendments, and partly because the
labour required for pest control diminished as soil fertility and plant
health improved from compost and green manure, and the organic integrated
pest management regime became more mature and effective in preventing pest
attacks. The carrot crop was introduced when the soil fertility had already
been built up, so there is little or no difference in production costs over
the three successive years.

For tables, please see http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BrPaulsOrganicFarm.php

Farmers' own open pollinated varieties outperform commercial hybrids

Hybrid seeds are sold by companies for their potential to give higher yields
than non-hybrid seeds. But because they do not breed true, farmers must
purchase the seeds from the companies every year if they want to keep up the
same performance. In contrast, non-hybrid seeds, or open pollinated varieties
(OPVs), though lower yielding, have allowed the farmers to save and replant
seeds every year. That is what every student of agriculture and genetics has
been told, and it has become a dogma among academic plant scientists that
open pollinated varieties can never yield as much as hybrids.

Br. Paul has proven them wrong. OPVs, obtained from local small-scale farmers
who have been saving them for years, gave yields equal or better than some
hybrid varieties grown under the same organic management regime. Table 6
shows the yields of OPV and hybrid maize under organic management.

For tables, please see http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BrPaulsOrganicFarm.php


The high yields from OPVs show that they perform better in low external input
systems, as opposed to hybrids that require high external inputs to fulfil
their high yielding potentials. That is good news for small-scale farmers,
not only in providing food security, but also the right to save, exchange and
replant their own seeds, which they have had for millennia, instead of
depending on the companies, and worse, in the case of GM crops, pay extra
“technology fees”.

“We are told that hybrid maize seeds will yield three times as much as the
OPVs.” Br. Paul says, “But one member of staff at Kasisi last year planted an
OPV maize variety using compost and manure teas as fertiliser. Well he has
been able to sell his surplus maize to his neighbour who planted hybrid maize
seed and used fertiliser. Who has food security?”

“Some farmers do even better. Another family went into organic production
since 1998, and has been able to buy a donkey, a bicycle, roofing sheets, a
colour TV, a maize grinding mill, and pay for the university fees of a
daughter.” Br. Paul continues, “They were able to feed themselves when they
farmed conventionally, but never had any money left over. They produced food
for the house and managed to repay the fertilizer loan, but after going into
organic production, they have much more money at their disposal.”

Unlearning his lessons at university

Br. Paul was raised on a farm in Southwestern Ontario in Canada, one of the
most productive farming areas in the country. He says, “My dad used a lot of
fertilisers and chemicals. We were modern farmers like many others in the
area, quick to adopt new technologies, using more and more fertilisers every
year, applying herbicides and spraying for pests in large tomato field.”

Br. Paul majored in plant pathology while studying for his agricultural
degree, his studies were focussed on the Green Revolution. He confesses,
“When I came to Zambia, I naively thought that I would change things here.
During the first 15 years, I promoted the use of fertiliser, chemical
spraying in the vegetable gardens and using hybrid seed. It finally dawned on
me that we were not going anywhere. Every year farmers were asking for loans
to buy seed and fertiliser. Farmers made some money on maize production in
only two years out of those 15 years.”

As he looked round, he realized it was not only at Kasisi and in Zambia, or
Latin America that farmers were doing poorly. It was the same in Europe and
North America. “In North America, farmers I knew personally have gone
bankrupt. They would have been considered role-model farmers, doing
everything according to the advice given by the government agricultural
extension officers and agricultural universities. But they went bankrupt and
lost their farms. The excuse offered was that inefficient farmers were being
weeded out.”

In Zambia, 80 percent of the rural population are poor. Many farmers cannot
even produce enough food to feed their own families. They are continually
asking for
loans to buy farming inputs. Fertilisers arrive late, if at all in the
villages. Now, they have been advised to add an equal amount of lime to the
fertilizer.

Transport is a big problem; there are virtually no roads for vehicles in
remote areas. To make things worse, a fuel crisis has taken over the country
in the past weeks and everywhere you go, long queues for petrol snake towards
empty petrol stations waiting for promised deliveries.

In the 1980s, someone suggested to Br. Paul that he should look at organic
agriculture, but he thought it was strictly for a small left-wing group who
had enough money to pay for this type of farming. Nevertheless when he
returned for home leave in Canada in 1988, he visited organic farmers, and
found them to be successful. He studied the principles of organic agriculture
in Ontario and adapted them to the situation in Zambia, and has never looked
back.

“The staff at KATC, once convinced of the organic way of farming and the
value of indigenous knowledge, have been very much in the forefront in
explaining this to their fellow country folk.” Says Br. Paul.

The Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre trains small-scale farmers in 5-day
residential courses on the principles of organic agriculture and indigenous
knowledge, on organic vegetable production, organic cotton production,
internal control systems, farm management, beekeeping, agroforestry, seed
multiplication on farm and dairying.

========================================================
This article can be found on the I-SIS website at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BrPaulsOrganicFarm.php




  • [Livingontheland] Br. Paul's Organic Cotton and Vegetable Farm, Tradingpost, 11/17/2005

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