Br. Paul's Organic Cotton and Vegetable Farm

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16 Nov 2005 15:47:33 -0000

Br. Paul's Organic Cotton and Vegetable Farm

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http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BrPaulsOrganicFarm.php

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ISIS Press Release 04/11/05

 

Br. Paul's Organic Cotton and Vegetable Farm

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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.

 

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This article can be found on the I-SIS website at

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BrPaulsOrganicFarm.php

 

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