this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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When Benson Wanjala started farming in his western Kenya village two and a half decades ago, his 10-acre farm could produce a bountiful harvest of 200 bags of maize. That has dwindled to 30. He says his once fertile soil has become a nearly lifeless field that no longer earns him a living.

Like many other farmers, he blames acidifying fertilizers pushed in Kenya and other African countries in recent years. He said he started using the fertilizers to boost his yield and it worked — until it didn’t. Kenya’s government first introduced a fertilizer subsidy in 2008, making chemical fertilizers more accessible for smaller-scale farmers.

Problems with soil health are growing as the African continent struggles to feed itself. Africa has 65% of the world’s remaining uncultivated arable land but has spent about $60 billion annually to import food, according to the African Development Bank. The spending is estimated to jump to $110 billion by 2025 due to increased demand and changing consumption habits.

“Inorganic fertilizers were never meant to be the foundation of crop production,” he said, later adding that because of “commercially inclined farming, our soils are now poor, acidic, and low in biomass resources, and without life!”

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[–] stoly@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The sort of work that is succeeding in parts of Africa, Pakistan, and India is setting up what they call food forests. Put some fruiting tree species in the center and surround throughout with fruiting and vegetable producing plants. This will form a more complex web of creatures that can live together and produce food for the people who take care of them. No fertilizers, no irrigation--just crops that are appropriate for the region. They can take years to get going, though, which is the hard part. Once they are going, it's just a question of tending to them.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 24 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

You also can't really mechanise that, so forget about sending the kids to the city for high school. And it's pretty much guarenteed you need to fertilise at least a bit to get the same yield, just by conservation of mass of P and N, assuming you're harvesting from it.

Contrary to popular opinion, farming is not simple or easy, and there's actual reasons monoculture at scale is so popular.