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Stone Lines Reduce Erosion
As a farmer you may live in a place where the land is dry. You might have noticed that soil blows around and that your crops don’t grow or are stunted. It may have started with a drought, or drought has made it worse, and you are worried that you will have to keep moving…
Prevent Erosion with Vetiver Grass
Vetiver grass (Vetiver zizanioides) can stop your soil from running away from home. Farmers all over the world use it to prevent soil from eroding on hillsides. It may work for you. If you plant vetiver close together in a row it makes a thick hedge. This hedge slows the flow of water down a…
Use half-moon ditches to prevent soil erosion
Save and edit this resource as a Word document. You may live in a place where the land is dry and cracked. No trees, plants or crops grow there. Animals barely survive. You worry you will have to move to find better land for farming. You are not alone. Infertile land is spreading like a…
Stop Your Land from Turning to Desert
Save and edit this resource as a Word document. Imagine a vast area of land. Now, picture nothing on it. No trees, no plants – just dust and cracked earth. How does land get to this state? When rich earth that used to produce crops loses most of its fertility and becomes barren, we call…
Live Fences Protect Crops and Plants
In Burkina Faso, a country in West Africa, deforestation and soil erosion are having a disastrous impact on the environment. Reforestation programs have been introduced to reverse the damage. But many of these programs are expensive and the newly planted trees are often destroyed in the first year by village cattle. It is estimated that…
Make Drylands Productive with Planting Pits
Even if you have dry, desert soils with a hard crust you can improve your land and grow crops again. In parts of West Africa farmers make cracked, hardpan soils productive again by planting their grain seeds in small pits. They plant sorghum and millet this way. Here’s how you can make these planting pits….
No Pit Latrine Produces Fertilizer
A new type of latrine improves health by breaking the cycle of fecal contamination and the spread of diseases such as diarrhea, hepatitis, typhoid, and parasitic infections. It also provides farmers with fertilizer for their crops. The high quality organic fertilizer produced by the new latrine reduces farmers’ costs and helps to avoid the long…
Build and Maintain Contour Ridges
Some people wonder why it is necessary to use special conservation measures when they can reap crops from their fields without this extra effort. Why do these people think that all is well? They are unaware of the “silent thief” of our land – soil erosion. You can stop that silent thief in your own…
Liquid manure is good fertilizer
You can tell how much plant food a soil contains by simply looking at the colour of crops in a field. Some field crops look green while some are yellowish. Green crops show that the soil has enough plant food. A yellow crop usually indicates that the soil does not have enough plant food. Every…
Where to Find Compost Materials
Everywhere people are looking for cheap alternatives. Farmers are not left out in this search. They are looking for cheap alternatives to expensive farm inputs such as chemical fertilizers. Chemicals are not only expensive, they can also damage the soil and the environment, especially if used incorrectly. Farmyard manure is one alternative. It supplies all…