Congo Update 4/21/2013

Greeting from the Congo


Potato planting is finally done and were trying to cultivate the potatoes.  There was a delay as the equipment storage down south first sent the wrong cultivator and then it rain every day.  We’ve had over 11 inches of rain in April so far and Its still raining.  There are a lot of dry places in Africa, but Central Africa where I am is the wet part.  At least the soils a well drained loams with 6 % organic matter so We can work the ground the next day after a rain except for the really heavy ones.  The weed pressure is fierce in patches where there is yellow nutsedge.  For those who don’t have this bad weed, be thankful.  Its hard to cultivate and few herbicides work on it.  There are only the old pesticides available here in any case.  I could only get my hands on some prowl for potatoes.  Sprayed a quart of round-up on the sedge before the potatoes emerged and it didn’t do much.  The cultivator we put together does a pretty good job and then we have to do some hand clean-up afterwards.

So far the Red potatoes are doing the best.  All emerging fast and doing well.  The yellows and whites have had a lot of problems with seed piece decay and rhizoctonia attacking the stems.  A few its too early to tell, but that was the purpose for soo many varieties this first year to evaluate the best for Congo conditions.

When first working the ground they broke up the big termite hills, the termites are not giving up.  They keep trying to rebuild their homes.  The picture below shows one about to be taken down again by the cultivator.  The green sedge you see is only two weeks worth of growth.

Yesterday we had some excitement as the cultivator came across a hive of African bees nesting on a termite hill in the potato field.  First I though, their just bees, leave them alone, and then it hit me, these aren’t the same bees as home.  They nest on the go and are very aggressive.  We’ll have a little gap in the cultivation.

We got a acre of onions and carrots planted by hand last week as well.  There is a pneumatic planter somewhere in the country for beans and vegetables, but I haven’t seen it yet.  The congo Government part of this program is to promote mechanized agriculture so they bought a bunch of equipment and I’m putting it to use on the farm.  When the farm gets successful the idea is to expand on the villagers land with the trained tractor drivers.  First we have to get the varieties and farming system worked out and I’ll put together a little how to  booklet on each crop.  We can also be a source of improved seed as well.  At least that’s the plan.

Speaking of farming, I spoke to the minster of Ag here and they will give land to anyone willing to develop it and grow crops.  They also offer a 5 year exemption on import duties to bring in equipment and supplies and a 5 year exemption on taxes.  There is lots of good flat Ag land here up north with plenty of natural rainfall.  Or we could use some experienced tractorists/mechanics to work on the project farms.  Anyone feeling adventurist??

Here is the Seed cutting crew on their last day

I’ll finish with this pic of some animal friends I took in the nearby village.

Congo Update 8 April 2013

Greeting from the Congo

Last weekend was a zoo.  Four containers of seed showed up in Lekana and we had to move them to the farm in these small trailers connected to a tractor as the semi’s that showed up with the seed could never make it down that 20 km farm road.  Truck drivers seam the same everywhere, they act like the world is going to end if they aren’t unloaded right away, and if you get them unloaded they are sleeping in town the next day.  There was one really nasty truck driver yelling up a storm to get unloaded first.  I know how to deal with truck drivers, I said we’ll unload you last and ignored him. 

Then on Monday the minister of Agriculture showed up on the farm with the governor, two film crews and an entourage of about 50 people.  He was there to check up on our progress and publicize his program of mechanized agriculture which we are implementing.  I was on Congo TV with my bad french.  People have come up to me saying they saw me on TV, good thing I didn’t have to watch it.  It went well.  We had disks running, then a fertilizer spreader and finally two potato planters. 

Loading the fertilizer spreader by hand.  I made a three part blend mixed in the spreader.

These little spreaders are pretty hard to calibrate and since driving in a straight line is a new ability for the tractor drivers - not the best application.

Potato planting is going pretty good.  A little slow as it rains almost every pm here now and we have top stop, but the loam soil is nice that we can get going the next day around 9 am after a bit of morning sun.  We have 15 potato varieties here to try.  I thought it was a great idea in the US to try a lot this first year and pick the best for the future, but in practice I signed myself up for a lot of work keeping them all straight.  Some of the tag with the variety name on the bag also fell off, so I have to open the bag and guess the variety.  All the seed is on the farm and we planted a little more than half the seed now.

The potato seed organized by lot in piles under a refugee tent.  Needed somewhere to keep them out of the rain.

Disinfecting the equipment before use to cut down on diseases

 Loading the potato planter by hand

And planting potatoes 
The first plantings already have nice healthy sprouts and roots.  The weeds are also coming well, especially a sedge that is going to be a challenge. 

Keep having a little morning meeting to organize people and a little training session.  Thanks Google translate I have a script ready.  Congo went from hoes to now tractors with no animal traction in between like most places.  So I have to train in so many basic things like how to use a trailer jack.  But that’s why I’m here.  People here have small garden plots for manioc, sweet potatoes and peanuts for there starches and then forage for native fruits.  The garden plots are in a different place every year so shifting agriculture, but there is plenty of land so far.  The women seam to do most of this farming and foraging.  Down south the women bring thing in in baskets on their backs, but up north here they carry tings all on their heads balancing wild loads.

Women off to work in the fields with their hoe on their head and baby on their back


The men either seam to do nothing or hunt for whatever they can kill.  They do raise some goats, pigs and chickens, but mostly to sell for money.  Congo is mostly Christian so it doesn’t have that weird separation of men and women like some, but not all Islamic countries.  The women really hold their own with the men taking.  Maybe they do the farming since someone has to be responsible to feed the kids.  I’m not sure yet though.

The guy with some stork I think someone shot nearby.  Some protein I guess. 
Anyway as my french improves I’ll be more aware of what’s going on around me besides what I can see.

One more photo

Congo Update 24, March 2013

Greeting from the Congo

News in the area.  The rebels captured the capital of the Central African Republic which is the country to the north, but that is a good 14 hard hours away by vehicle so no effect here.  Our bigger neighbor too the south, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) gets in the news from time to time since there is a civil war on their eastern border.  The DRC is just across the congo river which I can see from my apartment, but there problems are on the DRC’s eastern side and there are no roads between here and there.  The DRC is a huge country with lots of people.  There are 4 times the amount of people in Kinshasa which is right across the river than in all of the republic on Congo.  Its nice and calm here which is nice.

Kinshasa across the Congo river.  The Congo river drains the central African rainforest - one of the last wild areas in the world.

This next week we should begin planting the potato crop as the soil is ready.  Its been raining steady these days.  Hopefully the second rainy season which is normally between late march to may is extended and not starting early to end early.  We have also been sorting some of the seed and cutting some of the bigger seeds in some varieties.  This is more of an experiment.  If we can cut the seed like is commonly done in the US this makes more potatoes available for planting and seed costs cheaper.  In the tropics soil diseases are more of an issue and we don’t have the modern storages used in the US to store the cut seed.  Past experience has shown that storing the cut seed a minimum of three days and a maximum of 7 heals the cut wound enough to avoid problems.  We shall see here.

Republic of Congo like a lot of other developing countries has almost no middle class.  In the two big cities, Brazzaville and Pointe Noire there is a city center that is very nice and you can get imported stuff and go to nice restaurant for a lot of money.  About 2x what things cost in the US. This is where the expats live and the people well connected with the government.  Outside these enclaves things are much different - haphazard building, limited food choices and crowded in the towns.  There are very few people in the rural areas with just small villages.

Pointe Noire downtown.

And every street is a maze of small shops and street stalls selling the same stuff

Little town center of Louette in the rural area.

In the villages there are only a few stores selling the essentials

The roads also vary a lot There are these new roads the Chinese are building and when they are finish are really nice, but there are very few of them.  Most of the roads are rough dirt that turn into mudholes when it rains.  The roads up by Lekana go though the grasslands and its like driving in a green tunnel.  The grass is so tall you can’t see out of your windows.

Nice road near Point Noire

More typical country road after a rain

Road though tall grass in Lekana.  That’s a full sized truck

Then there are the adaptations to life here.  Brakes drums have a problem and you don’t have a lathe.  Take a grinder to them.

The power grid is pretty undependable if you have it at all so much is spent on private generators.  Everybody here seams to have a cell phone, but everybody doesn’t have electricity to charge them.  Thus cell phone charging businesses are born.

I’ll have more farming news the next update.  I’ll just close with a pic of some village girls with their little brother.

Congo Update 14 March 2013

 Greeting from the Congo

I'm at the new farm up north now and the heat is much more bearable as its 2,500 ft altitude here and it gets cool at night.  There are  a few bigger towns, but mostly its small villages of like 50 people living in a group surrounded by grasslands and some patches of trees.  The villages tend to have fruit tress like avocado, mango, safu and others like the cola nut that give coca cola some of its flavor.  Outside the villages there are small cleared patched with local crops grown - mostly manioc a very starchy root crop.  Otherwise they grow sweet potatoes and some greens.  The diet is pretty simple with a little variety thrown in like yesterday the workers were eating bushmeat (mostly antelope and wild pigs) and grasshoppers - a little too much roughage for me like eating thick grass.  There are very few chickens and a fair amount of these short goats.  I guess they don't eat the goats but sell them to muslims in the cities (lebanese run most of the retail stores here).

They also eat a lot of fish here. 

Now the farm.  We are trying to work in 6 to 8 foot of native grassland that probably have been here forever.  This area once had elephants roaming - they still do a little farther north.  Its mixed species grass with bracken ferns, small bushes and some tall reeds.  Probably should have shredded it first but we don't have on in any case so they slowly worked a diskplow though the field 5 ft at a time.  This is like the pioneer work a century ago in the US.  

Me at the edge of the field to give some perspective of the size of the native grass we're trying to clear with small equipment.

Diskplows that turned the grass down

The soil below is dark black loam with plenty of organic matter 18 to 24" deep and then a yellow subsoil.  It should do great. 

The grass left and the big root balls are still too much for the small disks we have, even when we put extra weight on them so we're having villagers gather up and burn the bigger ones.  Then I plan on spreading dry fertilizer and disking again.  Hopefully that will leave the ground clean enough to get a potato planter though it.  Later on we can do more minimum till, but now we have to just work though all that grass.  Does anybody have any better ideas?

Hand clearing and burning the grass clumps after the root balls

And it keeps raining and when it rains here it really rains.  In the plateau region up north water is a problem   There are very few rivers and no wells and yet it rains like crazy.  I'd love to get a big drilling rig here and drill a deep well.  There has to be water down there.  The villages and people have these cisterns that collect the rain water off the roofs to survive.

There are also these big termite hills all over the place that will just stop a tractor.  There must be two species, one that makes these big  tall ones with the yellow subsoil and another that makes these short mushroom shaped ones with the black topsoil.They say you can tell how long its been since the field has been farmed by how tall the termite mounds are.  Judging from that a long time.  Here I am by one.

Anyway getting a house set up here for my home base up north where I'll spend a lot of time.  Got solar panels and an inverter so we have power and plan on a elevated water tank with a solar pump to have running water instead getting bucket out of the cistern as now.  The house will also serve as the office so the workers are in and out.  The people are really friendly here and seam to have fun at most thing and my struggles with my french now.  I get internet though the cell phone network and its not bad (3g).  Here they never had landlines, just went right to cellphones.  

We got some of the seed at the farm and are sorting it by hand and cutting some of the bigger one to store for three or so days and should be planting later this week.  Have to keep going as more seed is arriving and we need to get in 70 HA (160 A) soon.  

Congo Update 9 March 2013

Greeting from the Congo

People are asking me if its safe here and the answer is yes.  The country is really calm.  They had their "incident" as they call it in the mid 90's when there was a contested Presidential election that resulted in a civil war.  That's over, though when you travel  though the Poole region there is a armed army presence. In the news there are stories of problems in the Democratic Rep of Congo, but that's another country and its problems are way over by Rwanda.   Not much crime here and in the countyside the doors of most houses are just curtains.  I live pretty comfortable in my apartment in the capital here is in the rich center part of town and I live pretty comfortable.  Out in the county things are more rustic. 

Just got recently back from a visit though the southern farms.  There are more people in the south, but Congo just doesn't have a lot of people.  There is only 4 1/2 million people in the whole country.  In the very North end of the country is one of the most undeveloped parts of the world and the heart of Africa as they called it.

Town of Bounzee

The south farms were stated a few years ago and they have been growing corn and now soybeans.  As opposed to the north farms that are virgin grasslands now.  The soils are more clay and much less organic matter and pH around 4 so pretty acid.  The corn does good on virgin ground, but is dramatically worse the 2nd year.  

Corn with phosphorus deficiency symptoms

Soybeans with phosphorus and magnesium deficiency symptoms.  All of this is tied to the aluminum toxicity burning the roots and leading to other problems

We got the first of the US potato seed planted on the south farm.  It was a battle with my broken french.  Only a little bit (10 Ha) will be there.  Mostly as a check to prove they won't work there to push more farming development in the North I hope.  It was a battle to get 4 inches of cover on the seed as they like to work the ground to death here.  There are these beastly tractors from Belarus and disks and disk plows that they like to use.  What I used to call recreational tillage in the US.  Up North will be easier as I'll set the pattern as opposed to teaching an old dog new tricks.  Its hotter in these southern farms and just no wind ever and the sun seams to come straight down.  I wouldn't last if I only had to stay at this heat all the time.

Other notes.  There are very few domestic animals here.  Only a few small chickens and a fair amount of these short legged goats grazing.  There are very few cows and I guess they won't eat the tall grass everywhere, just when its young so it must develop a poison when it grows tall.  Wild animal there are some antelope and wild pigs.  Used to be elephants years ago. 

There are now horses of beasts of burden and very few cars so people end up carrying things everywhere on there backs with these cone shaped baskets.  Imagine bringing in the harvest that way.

 

On the way down to the coast the road passes though a forested region.  Congo gets its money from Oil and timber sales and there is a steady procession of trucks carrying these huge logs of tropical hardwood to the coast.  The pallets here are made of this tropical hardwood and are so heavy you need two people to carry them.  Must be like 300 lbs.  

Here I am by a big Baobob tree.  I've heard they were big, but wow.

Went to the coastal city of Pointe Noire where the petroleum industry is just offshore.  Its the richest city and has a lot of expats living there so there is western style restaurants,stores and the like.  The beaches are nice with white sand and a nice ocean breeze in the town.  Went there to see the first potato seed released after spending like a month in customs.  At least the containers are plugged in for the refrigeration. 



People are really friendly.  Out in teh country the kids run out and say Mondeli  which is white guy in the local language.  So French is there second language like its my 4th.  

Village kids

Kids make their own toys here, like this car to push around