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

Congo Update 18, June 2013

Greeting from the Congo.

The rainy season looks like its over as it hasn’t rained in since June started.  There are two rainy seasons here, the bigger one that starts in September and last though December and another one that runs March though May which just finished.  Its also getting somewhat cooler.  It gets down to like 68 degrees F at night now and only up in the 80's in the day.  I love it now that it isn’t so darn hot.  The locals are wearing coats in the morning since its so “cold”.  Its all what you’re used to I guess.   Water is getting to be a problem here now as the rains stopped.  There are very few rivers up north here on the plateau.  They save water in cisterns, either big village ones and small house ones collecting rainwater.  That's what I have at the house here.  Eventually they buy water trucked in.  I'd like to drill one day for water, I hear its around 230 ft down so you need a good well rig to get it.

Little cement cisterns to collect rainwater

The potato crop is maturing and the first planted are going down.  The potatoes themselves now need 3 to 4 weeks to set their skin so we can harvest them.  Now that’s its drying up this will be perfect for a good harvest.  We’ve been going around with the guys to look for problems and dig up plants to check the tubers in the different varieties.

Some of the early favorites have been overshadowed by other now.  Some like the Granolas, Keuka Golds and Chieftains have bigger sets (number of tubers per plant) which will give them better yields.  There was never any big pest problems, just a few big tomato hornworm like caterpillars that are dramatic looking, but few in number and these small yellow larva with red spines on them that I was told will sting you - I didn’t test this out.

Not sure what those were, but they were sporadic as well.  The diseases were only a little blight in a few varieties and other none.  The isolation here really helps.  We could really produce some good seed with an occasional US certified seed purchase to renew the stock.  One of the purposes of the farms is to produce food for the school lunch program that started IPHD’s work here in the Congo, another is to show how large scale mechanized farm can work here and I want another function to be working with the local farmers to try some small patches of crops working with us and using the improved seed we can provide.  There is another program we are working with that rents out tractors to work the ground, but that alone can have its issues.  In my experience when you jump from small hand worked subsistence plots to commercial Ag you have to jump all in.

A small plot of potatoes and peanuts planted by the local villagers


 Just working the ground by renting tractors with the same yields just increases your costs and with the same yields profits will go down.  Improved seeds, some fertilizer (be it organic or granular as phosphate is a big issue here) and I believe herbicide.  I know the organic guys out there will complain, but the grassy weeds like yellow nutsedge and satintail grass are just very difficult to cultivate out with their roots and bulbs that regrow rapidly.  Anyway that’s the plan for next season to grow some cooperative plots with a few farmers with each putting in some inputs including some purchases by the locals.  Nothing like cash down to get good cooperation.  We went over the costs and returns on the local crops and they are making so little now on their crops.

The dry ban crops are looking really good.  Flowering and putting on pods now.  They are bush types and the locals are really excited about how fast and productive they are compared to the pole type beans grown here locally.  I’m hoping they’ll finish up good.  The production will go for seed and right into the school lunch program feeding 300,000 kids.

Kids in the village of Nkounou


No combine here yet so we’ll have to harvest them by hand this first season.  Good thing there is only 13 HA (32 Acres).  All you need is a stick and a tarp to harvest them and a basket and some wind to clean them up.  We put some innoculum on the seeds and it worked good as there is good Rhizobium bacteria nodules on the roots that are pink inside indicating they are fixing nitrogen for the crop.

We have to get a three year rotation going here of a cereal crop, a legume followed by a green manure crop to maintain and rebuild the organic matter, especially in the south where there is serious acid and aluminum toxicity problems.

During this slow time on the farm I have been going over equipment and tractor maintenance with the guys.  In this humid climate rust is a big problem and you need to keep things well greased and oiled up.  Spraying oil on the equipment with a small garden sprayer is one idea.  I also think every tractor driver should be able to weld somewhat, so we’ve started welding classes. Just welding lines on old metal for now. I’m not the best welder, but better than most here as they tend not to get things hot enough. I’ve also been torturing them by setting up these tight courses with sticks for them to drive the tractors forward and reverse and not knock any of the sticks down. Good practice and amusing to watch at times.

I know this is overkill on the number of guys changing oil, but the purpose was to learn about tractor maintenace.

Grasslands of the Plateau region of the new farm just north of the Lefini wildlife reserve.

Otherwise we’re starting on opening up a new farm up north.  The other farms took over old government or abandoned farms that had some infrastructure.  This new farm is now only open land with nothing.  The land is beautiful without any yellow clay layer.  I soil sampled three feet down and only found black soil with that great organic smell.  We had to negociate it with the nearby villager and we marked out 4,500 HA (11,120 acres) before I said that’s too much.  We’ll just start with 1,000 HA for now (2,500 acres).  I used a handheld GPS to mark it, still was worried I would get lost and walking though the grass is really hard as its as tall as the cab in the tractor and has sharp edges.  We scared up some Antelopes and Gazelles in the process. The locations of the farms are  -02° 18' 46", +15° 26' 03"   for the new Nkounou farm and  -02° 21' 48", +14° 30' 19"  for the Lekana farm. These are in the format google earth likes.  You can search for Lekana by just entering Lekana, Plateaux, Republic of the Congo. 

 Marking out the borders of the new farm with a disk plow.
 We’ll start with some corn and beans and a little potatoes, onions and tomatoes.  They want to work a little with peanuts and manioc as well the most common local crops.  With just a bit of fertilizer there crops double or more in yield.  The new farm is about 2 ½ hours away from the Lekana farm.  The southern farms are a plane ride and then hours of rough roads so I don’t visit them often.  Right now I’m trying to organize getting the crop inputs and planting plan for the country.  Were getting some peanut harvesting equipment and I really want to try some lentils as well as they are aggressive plants, good protein source  and faster to cook than other beans saving firewood.  Soybeans and corn are good, but they have to be processed a little before they can be used for human consumption.

Otherwise trying to get a potato seed cellar built in time to store some plant back seed for next season.  We’re making it out of mud bricks.  I changed the dimensions of the bricks they make which was a struggle and will make it two layers thick which I anticipate the builders will struggle with as well.  In most places I've been they mix grass, straw or manure with the mud to make the bricks stronger. Here's its just the mud and when I suggested mixing in grass everyone was very upset. Change is hard.

Mud brick buildings are nice as they keep cool inside and hopefully can get the temp inside in the 60's for a few months potato seed storage.  That’s key as we can’t afford to buy all our potato seed imported and lose some during to long voyage and difficult overland trip.  Don’t worry potato producers we’ll still need new seed to replenish the stock.

I'll finish with some pics of the cool hand made cars the boys make here and drive around.  They have working doors, steering systems and all the details.  Hours went into their construction and the detail is great.They vary from just simple bottles with wheels to these elaborate ones.