Welcome to The Dairy Mail

by Fidelis Zvomuya

Siyabonga Matlala turns a spadeful of black soil on his 12-acre maize field, exposing a pack of wriggling earthworms that signal an abundance of organic material. The soil breaks apart easily in his hands, and the land suffers far less than it used to from erosion.

Matlala’s 25 ha farm in Doornkop, near Krugersdorp, northwest of Johannesburg, was allocated to him seven years ago by government under its land reform programme and is now twice as rich in nutrients as it was when he first abandoned deep ploughing three years ago.

“I have learnt how modern farming isn’t good for land. Tilling and other practices leave farmland vulnerable to erosion; precious topsoil is literally being washed away. The real problem is that the land we are washing away is not being remade,” said the 45-year-old smallholder maize and vegetable farmer.

He said good farm practices don’t have to be based on technology and practices that hurt the environment.

“Land can be reclaimed not only through appropriate fertilisation but through more environmentally sensitive techniques.

“For starters, there’s agro-forestry, which involves planting trees that replenish the soil with nutrients such as nitrogen,” he said.
Farmers could also learn low-till or no-till farming techniques and be encouraged to plant pest-tolerant crops, which would cut down on insecticide and pesticide use.

“The mould board plough, traditionally used to prepare cropland for planting, has become a costly villain blamed for alarming rates of erosion of precious farm belt topsoil, and farmers are abandoning it in droves,” he said.

On his farm, Matlala’s new techniques range from minimum tillage, in which the soil is churned lightly with disks and harrows, to ‘no-till’, which involves virtually no disturbance of the soil before seeding.

The idea is to retain a blanket of plants or plant residues on the surface to hold the soil against water and wind erosion. Chemical herbicides are used as the plough’s replacement in controlling weeds and soil covering plants such as clover so that crops have room to grow.

“I am not a born-again, soil-saving conservationist. But I have leant that ploughing open soil to erosion also loosens, warms and dries the ground for planting.

“Besides, ploughed fields look clean and neat and are traditionally evidence of hard work. However, that evidence has become expensive.

“As usual, economics is the main motivating force: not ploughing has become cheaper than ploughing,” he said.

Farmers are turning to no-till methods to stop the loss of topsoil and improve its organic content, conserve ground moisture and reduce runoff of pesticides and fertiliser into lakes, streams and rivers.

“Tillage for me is a disaster for the soil; it’s like a hurricane coming through,” said Matlala. “I’m going to leave this soil in better condition than when I found it.”

After harvesting, Matlala leaves crop residue on the field over the winter to improve soil quality and stop erosion. In addition, crops are rotated annually to cut down on diseases and insect infestations that take root if the same crop is planted each year.

Instead of ploughing before each planting, he levels the previous crop, lets the residue decompose and seeds the following year’s crop directly into the mulch remains.

The runoff stopped, and within two years, the farm had a layer of topsoil that “now grows whatever you plant,” he said.

Whereas the land initially produced 4 440kg, of maize per hactare, the farm, which farms 10 000 ha, last year produced 6 000 kg of maize per hectare.

Traditionally, farmers till land to kill weeds and make soil crumble. But ploughed dirt can wash or blow away. Tilling also exposes lower layers of earth to sunlight, evaporating moisture and burning nutrients.

With the high input costs and low returns, more and more smallholder farmers are turning to conservation tillage to increase their harvests and protect their soil. Matlala plants his seeds in untilled soil, in drilled holes or narrow ditches.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), no till eliminates power-intensive soil tillage and reduces labour for crop production by more than 50% for small-scale farmers. According to the UN, this is especially important for households affected by HIV and Aids, where children or the elderly are responsible for farm labour.

For mechanised farms, it reduces fuel requirements by 70% and the need for machinery by 50%. Because farmers do not repeatedly go into the fields to plough, they can save up to 48 l of fuel per hectare, about R84 per hectare on machinery wear and maintenance costs, and four 60-hour weeks in labour time, according to a conservation specialist at the Agriculture Research Council (ARC).

An anonymous researcher said it takes better management and patience to make no till work. Reduced deep ploughing could cut the release of carbon dioxide from the soil to the air, combating global warming. And the increased carbon dioxide in the soil will help farmers grow enough food using more and more chemicals and fertilisers,” he said.

When Matlala acquired the piece of land, it still bore the scrubby bushes, gnarled trees and wiry grasses typical of rural South Africa’s vast central province. He was migrating from the more fertile, crowded south of Bloemfontein, but was undeterred by the new rugged terrain, on his 50 ha piece of land.

Crop rotation
The area was historically considered unproductive and only fit for grazing cattle.“Conservation agriculture is a resource-efficient crop production practice based on three principles that enhance biological processes above and below the ground. The guiding principles involve minimum or even zero mechanical disturbance of the soil; keeping the soil covered at all times, either by a growing crop or a dead mulch of crop residues; and diversified crop rotation,” Matlala said.

In the area, other smallholder farmers are now coping his initiative with some using traditional crop varieties without herbicides or herbicide tolerant varieties, as well as using crop rotation to control pests.