Congo Update 11 Oct 2013

Greetings from the Congo

We are in between seasons now and mostly just working ground.  Both farms up north are going to be a lot bigger this season.  They were going to be really big but all the seed isn’t going to arrive in time for this next season.  It’s a really battle to get everything ordered, the containers filled, put on the ocean ships and then released form the port here in time.  Then there is the in country transport over bad roads slow and costly.  Lots of logistics.  Right now its corn, soybeans, dry beans and potatoes again for Oct/Nov planting.  Got 130 Ha(320 acres) cleared and worked at the new farm in Nkoumou, Ngo and 180 HA(445 acres) at the Lekana farm.   We are also  working ground for the local farmers for 40,000 CFA a HA (about $35/acre which is a subsidized rate).  They are planting manioc mostly on this worked ground but some other crops as well.  The tractor can do in an hour what it takes a month by and with a hoe.

Clearing the land is a battle with the small trees.  The Plateaux area of Congo is a mix of small forests mixed with savanna area.  The forest areas have many different species of tall trees.  In the lower areas there are more forest areas and up north pure tropical jungle and swampy areas where there is much less people and wildlife.  The savanna areas have small trees, but not the same species as the forest trees.  I guess the burning keeps the forest areas from growing.  Clearing these trees we used two big Russian tractors and pulled a big ocean ship chain between them to knock over the small trees and termite mounds.  After that people collected the trees to carry out of the fields with the trailers.  Pretty good expense all these day laborers.  Corn and bean planters can take some branches, but potato and onion equipment cannot take all these stumps and branches - broke a lot of equipment that is hard to find parts.  

Tractors and anchor chain knocking down small trees and termite hills

The potato seed isn’t holding all that well in the mud brick storage.  Didn’t get my solar powered fans to vent out the field heat so it’s a little warm inside.  Some varieties are doing better than others.  I guess its something we had to learn in any case.  The cold chain is non existent here in Congo so we need to select varieties that can take some abuse.  I’ve seen many promising varieties that fall apart during storage so they get dropped.  The Red Pontiac looked promising in the field, but just rotted fast in storage.  Of the 16 varieties we started we are down to 4 - Cheiftain, Red LaSoda, Granola and Calwhite.  Most of these were developed in southern area.  I think potatoes have more day length sensitivity tan we thought earlier and the northern varieties cycled out too fast like the Ranger Russet.  We are 2 degrees south of the equator so the days are 12 hours sun a day every day all year and crops waiting for long days will never get it.  

Went on a trip to a private wildlife area where they are rehabilitating some rescued lowland Gorillas.  Its in a valley with a river and scenic lake.  It’s a little set up, but the gorillas are still wild.  The US ambassador asked for a special close up visit and one of his party got attacked and almost killed the week before we visited.  Didn’t see any Hippos in the river though.  The Gorillas are separated from us by the river.  Didn’t know gorillas can not swim so we were safe.  

In past posts I talked about these hand made truck the boys make and take out for a drive.  Well now some tractors have started to show up in the village complete with trailers.  

Had one farm accident and had to take him to the clinic for some stitches. it could have been worse. |Its always a worry with people learning to use big machinery that people can get hurt bad.  Farming and ranching is still a dangerous work.  He got his stitches outside on the porch of the clinic with minimal disinfection, but did OK in the end.

Otherwise still building things here.  Another storage building at Lekana for grain seeds and equipment parts.  Also another water cistern to stare water from these new roofs of the potato cellar.  At he new farm there is nothing so we are fixing up a old school building and building a new farm building.  A lot of work as all the sand, gravel, rocks and water needs to be brought in.  Gravel and rocks need to be brought from Brazzaville as there just isn’t any rocks on the plateau region.  The boards they cut right near the farm from big trees in those patches of forest.  They cut the boards all with chainsaws using this frame to hold the saw straight and the same thickness of cuts.  The cut these big wide trees into sections 2 inches by over 3 feet wide and then into 4 x 4's, 4 x 4's, 2 x 8's and even 1 x 12 boards for building.

water cistern

Another storage building for dry seed and supplies

Cutting up a big tree into boards

This time of year the termites swarm where the males and new potential queens leave to mate and start new colonies.  The people here cover the termite hills with plastic to capture these swarms and boil them to eat.  They taste like burning grass.  There are also other odd things in the market at times like palm grubs.  The diet in the countryside is mostly manioc with peanuts, local greens, bracken fern fiddlenecks, dried fish and beans and occasionally some bushmeat.  The fruits are starting again.  There is avocado, pineapple and mango now and the safu trees are getting full.  A lot of things are blooming now during the dry season.  The rains are just staring now.  It time to plant soon.

Capturing termites

Palm grubs about 3 inches long and live catfish at the market

Some flowers in bloom now

Congo Update 28 Aug 2013

Greeting from the Congo

Harvest is over mostly which is nice.  Yields were low and a lot of varieties we tried didn’t work very well at all, but we learned a lot and more importantly the new tractoristes have learned a lot about working with and maintaining the farm machinery and growing a crop in a large mechanized modern setting.  In development you can build a lot of things but if people are not trained things fall apart fast when the expat leaves.  Too often not enough effort is budgeted in projects in the local people and more in things you can make a show of.  The yield varied a lot but it was obvious were the weed control was poor the potato yield suffered, especially where there was a lot of bracken fern.  Bracken fern has a known allelopathic effect on other plants thus it can dominate its environment by suppressing the competition.

We also grew a little watermelon for a trial and it did really well and was good eating.  Most of the fruits here a sour as many of the local vegetable.  I’m not sure if the acid soils leads to sour plants, but the watermelon was nice an sweet.  Grew a little carrots, onions, cucumbers and tomatoes.  Got a pneumatic small vegetable seeder ordered as well as some seed to plant big acres of onions, carrots and watermelon in the future.

We have three big challenges next season to increase the yields as I see it: better ground preparation, better weed control and more timely planting.  With the big Russian tractors and big Brazilian disks ground preparation will be better.  Since the tractor drivers are better trained I hope they can plant straighter so we can cultivate the potatoes twice.  Last season we had to give up the second one as we were taking out too many potatoes in the process.  The guys picked up on the cultivator blight name pretty fast. Those driving practice courses those staked paths should help.  Since yellow nutsedge is the big challenge and can not be effectively cultivated |I did some research and found very few herbicides that control sedges, but there are some.  I get some Sandea (halosufuron) for rice, beans and corn and Dual (Metolachor) for the potatoes, vegetables, onions, soybeans and peanuts).  Finally we should be more prepared to plant in time the next time.  Last season I arrived here and the potato seed arrived at the same time without a good place to store it and the ground was not worked and new workers and lack of appropriate machinery it was a wonder we got anything.


One last thing to improve is the fertilizer.  Tropical soil with high rainfall usually have very poor soils which is counterintuitive as things look so lush but the nutrients are stored in the plants as the high rainfall washes out the nutrients from the soil.  The soil tests show lower levels than I’ve even seen in most nutrients except potassium that is ok.  Soil acidity up north is not good, but not in the 4 range like down south where aluminum toxicity is a serious issue.  Applying lime is the usual solution to acid soils, but its expensive here and internal transport is also very expensive and unreliable so in the long run you need to find a solution to the soils that doesn’t involve apply large amounts of unsustainable inputs.  IN the past they have applied NPK 15-15-15 which is what most people do as a default - throw a little of everything at it and hope for the best.  I got some DAP ordered which is 18-46-0 so more of the needed phosphorus, no unneeded potassium and this fertilizer is not going to add to the acidity problem like other types.  Crops that need more nitrogen like Corn we can just add some Urea.

I’m getting a little technical now, enough for now.

Traditionally people grow a few potatoes in this area by first clearing the land and oiling all the roots and stems and grass in a pile and burning it.  This burning releases all the stored potassium and phosphorus in the roots and grass which the potatoes need.  The soil turns red after the burning because the heat also burns off the organic matter and nitrogen in the soil as well.  This process works for this season, but is very destructive in the long run.  If you have a lot of free ground it works, but large farms can not be started in a new location every year so they need new processes.  Then squash in planted on the edge and potatoes on theses small hills.

At the end of harvest was the 15th of August - Independence day here.  Every year the President picks one village to pour a lot of money to turn into a City.  Puts in roads, new government buildings, street lights, drainage and showy things like the over the top full size sports stadium complete with night lights.  The odd thing is with water being such a problem up north drinking water wasn’t on the list of projects.  This year it was in Djambala which is 40 minutes from the potato farm and 2013 was the year of the potato so we had a part at the celebrations.  There is a parade for the president.  The farm guys marched in the parade along with one of the big tractors and a trailer with1 ton of potatoes (literally) on the new wide boulevard.  They didn’t want a white guy in the parade, but I did meet the presidents wife earlier and gave her potatoes.  There was many groups marching along with some traditional Teke groups and these clowns.

Farm guys in the parade

Teke chefs du village

These teke giants and woment with gourds and baskets

Teke dancer that do this very low spinning dance

Me and the mud ladys

The farms display at the ag expo part of the celebration

Congo clowns joking around with some soldiers

And finally some ladys that came by to watch the farm work with babies on board

Congo Update 24, July 2013

Greeting from the Congo

Its now the dry season and things are drying up and water up here in the plateaux region is getting to be a problem.  People with cisterns still have rain water collected earlier.  Cisterns vary from these cement/clay large pots, to steel barrels to underground ones from cement to holes in the ground lined with plastic.  Once that water is gone, you have to walk 20 km to the river or buy water from the water trucks that make that trip.  ( my cistern is half gone and its conservation mode here)  Water is 200 to 500 cFA for 25 liters ($0.40-$1 per 7 gals.  This is probably the big reason there are a lot less people living here in the highlands than down south where there are more rivers.  I hear some wells have been drilled without success, but there are a few springs in low spots so its probably very important where you drill. 

filling the water jugs (old palm oil containers) from a community cistern (6 gal).  The water is rationed at one fo these jugs for a family every two days.

The fields are burning here.  There are grass fires every day everywhere.  They mostly don’t burn the trees down.  People start fires to get ready for where they will be farming next year or start a fire and wait on the other side to kill any animals that come out and the fires get out of control and just keep burring.  There is a lot of open grasslands here so there is plenty of land to burn.  On the new farm we started one to burn off most of the tall grass to make it easier to work the ground, and that fire went far.  There is smoke everywhere and at times ashes falling.  No one seams concerned about it, even when its close to town or their villages.

The minister of Agriculture came up and inaugurated the new farm in Nkoumou, Ngo.  It was mostly a ceremony in the village and we had some new tractors lined up as the farm is just open fields now.  There was dancing, singing and drumming by the villagers and a lot of speeches.  The community comes out for everything new we do and it’s a big deal.  This is something I really like starting out from scratch, we drop out of the sky more or less in a small isolate village and change their lives forever.  The young guys especially really want to learn and do new things.  From my past development work I’ve learned its not always the things you build, but the people that you change that has the long lasting effect on a community and it multiplies. 

Drumming and dancing to celebrate tge openning of the Nkoumou farm.  There is a video of this at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvLyGyHpt2Y

The Minister of Ag giving a speach

Little girls in their best clothes


Potato harvest just started.  Just getting people trained up now.  W e have two 2 row potato diggers that struggle though the areas with those tall weeds.  I’m not used to elephant grass or tall bracken ferns in a potato field.  Then we have a bunch of people to separate the smaller seed tubers  from the bigger ones to send to market and bag them up.  The yield is OK, the Reds the best but probably because they were faster and took advantage of the rains earlier.  We really needed to more weeks of rain and better weed control.  For next season I’m ordering herbicides that will actually kill the weeds they have here, Also the tractor drivers are better now and should be able to drive straighter so we can cultivate the potatoes two time that are needed (this season I gave up on the second cultivation as they were taking out more potatoes than I thought the weeds would damage the crop), and plant earlier.  The size and quality looks pretty good.  There is some wireworm damage and some isolated spots of bacterial wilt.  There was a huge difference in yield were the bracken fern was growing.  Bracken fern has a known allelopathic plant that suppresses other plants and I guess potatoes so we’ll know better to avoid those spots next season.  Another interesting thing is thaat that tall grass where it regrew grew right though the potato tubers.   The minister of Ag also came to kick off the potato harvest with all the fanfare.  We will deliver 1 ton of potatoes to the President during the independence day festival in nearby Jdambala on Aug 15th.

One of the workers kids out in the field

women at luch break


The potato seed cellar is almost done.  It’s a mud brick structure like those old ones used in the US many years ago.  It has a dirt floor so we could dump some water on the floor to get humidity and I have two vents that I want to install a solar fan to bring in cool night air.  This way we can multiply some seed for next year and just bring in new imported seed to refresh the stock.  Also when the imported seed arrived in Feb we had no place to store it while planting and a lot broke down in that 90 degree heat.

The dry bean harvest started as well.  Since we don’t have a combine here yet this season we have to do it by hand.  The people pull the bean plants up by hand in the morning while they are still supple and haul them to the farm headquarters in a trailer and place them on a tarp.  When the sun gets out and drys them they beat them with a stick to release the beans form the pods and throw off the trash.  The beans are then winnowed by pouring them from a buck to a wheelbarrel with the help of some wind to clean out the fines.  The white beans are doing poorly since they got hit by angular spot disease, but the reds and pintos looks good as they has resistance to this disease.

Got delivery of these big Russian tractors and Brazilian disks (4 MT weight with 1 m disks) to work up the ground for next season in mid September.  They are lumbering things but they get though that tall grass and every munch up the small tress.   They struggle though the old hills made by the women in there garden plots of the past. They can work up 2 - 3 HA per hour and we have already worked a big amount on the new farm.  That doesn’t sound like much by US standards, but it’s a lot compared to what we were trying with that small equipment to get the ground ready for the potatoes and beans in Feb/March.  We were lucky to get 3 HA per day. The second rainy season starts in late Sept and I hear is more rain and longer.  Another try for potatoes, dry beans, onions, carrots, lentils and peanuts down south - and some corn and soybeans.

Working up the virgin ground with the big Tatu disk

And I'll end with a pic of a Nkoumou boy