Tackling rural poverty, together

Extract

The project promoted soil and water conservation measures and locally adapted production techniques to increase soil fertility, productivity and income. Farmers who have implemented the conservation techniques have seen many benefits. Their productivity has risen: maize yields on average have doubled from 6 to 12 bags an acre (from 1.3 to 2.6 t/ha); sunflower yields have gone up from 5 to 9 bags per acre (from 0.6 to 1.1 t/ha); and bean yields have risen from 3 to 5 bags per acre (0.7 to 1.2 t/ha). Farmers who have adopted soil and water conservation have planted trees such as leucaena, calliandra and croton on the bunds, as well as grasses such as Napier grass, desmodium, setaria and Pallida. They can feed cut grass and tree prunings to their animals, so milk yields have increased.