Nourishing the soil and producing sustainable yields

The Mucuna vines climb up the corn stalks and engulf the field three months after the corn harvest. In dry season the Mucuna dies back. When the rains start we plant corn seed directly in the mulch.

The corn was finally harvested from the small experimental field in the ACDI demonstration garden in January. Antoine set the husked ears in the sun for another week. Then the research guys shelled the corn, cleaned the seed and weighed it: 69 kilograms of gleaming white kernels filled two large basins.

No Iowa corn master would be impressed. Even an indifferent Iowa farmer produces 3 times as much per unit of land as we did in this small experiment. Still the 69kg translates into 1,586 kg/ha. And that is on a plot of weathered, sandy soil, using no fertilizers, in the sixth year of continuous corn cultivation on the same plot. To put the yield in perspective: a Congolese woman planting corn on a newly opened forest field would be delighted to produce 700 to 1,000 kg per hectare. And even she would never consider planting a second crop of corn on the same land until several years later.

How do we do it? The secret is the nitrogen-fixing capacity of the leguminous cover crop that follows the corn each year. Mucuna pruriens is a vigorous bean plant that buries the field in 3 feet of lush vegetation during the second rainy season. The leaves, vines and roots store up nitrogen. When the rains start again we plant the next corn crop. The nitrogen locked up in the decomposing organic matter is released, nourishing the young corn plant and favoring rapid growth. When the corn is maturing the next Mucuna cover crop is already developing. We harvest the corn and the cycle continues.

Agronomists have estimated that the Mucuna cover crop provides the equivalent of 17 to 35 bags of mixed chemical fertilizer for each 2.5 acres of land. That's about $1800 worth of fertilizer at current Kinshasa prices.

The yield in the experimental field was down a bit this year. But still the average over the last five years has been 1,733 kg/ha, about twice the yield in a traditional Congolese corn field - despite continuous cropping. This looks like one productive alternative to traditional slash and burn agriculture. Corn-Mucuna is one way to increase productivity and income and reduce the human footprint on increasingly scarce prime** agricultural land. That's the kind of stewardship ACDI is trying to encourage.


** "prime" agricultural land in much of Bandundu is misleading. These are old soils. They are highly weathered, stripped of most of their basic nutrients and chemically altered, impairing their capacity to hold on to nutrients. Most agriculture here depends on fertility locked up in the organic matter that accumulates during extended natural bush fallow intervals between cropping cycles.

Nearly 20 years, a work of love

Twenty years ago Timothée Kabila was a school principal. His deep faith and interest in how the church can contribute to the economic and social development of a country like Congo led him to a position on the board of the Lusekele Agricultural Development Center. He joined the staff here as administrator in September 1991.

Two weeks after he arrived, Congo experienced the first buck of political upheaval in the form of riots in Kinshasa. That upheaval cleaved Lusekele’s US- and Canada-based funding and interrupted one mission partnership for a year, the other permanently. Suddenly he was learning how to support extension work without significant outside financing. Financial crisis fostered conflict. Lusekele barely survived. You can imagine how he felt. Why had God led him to this place at that time?

Those first two years were not the only time when he has asked that question. Lusekele has known other financial crises. Timothée became the director of Lusekele. He has tenaciously fought encroachments on the land set aside as a base for regional extension work. He has patiently fended off predatory government officials looking for a part of any action, even before it wiggles. And he stoically tries to ignore the envious church people who can’t imagine that a “large and distinguished agricultural project” like Lusekele doesn’t net Timothée a handsome personal profit every year. He puts up with the guff so that six dedicated extension agents can work regularly with poor farmers and have a place to come home to at the end of every week.

It’s not just Timothée who has made sacrifices. He and his wife Marthe have long balanced vocation and the practical demands of raising a family of 6 surviving kids – not without difficulty. They have always had to supplement the meager Lusekele salary. When it came time to put everyone high school and college, Marthe decided that one of them had to look after their independent family business full-time. She runs the pharmacy and store 100 miles from Lusekele on the main Kikwit-Kinshasa highway. They are apart much of the time, but the sacrifice frees Timothée to continue his ministry here.

Timothée and the others that work here have chosen a vocation. They rarely receive a word of praise, encouragement or thanks. Still, the litany of the positive changes Lusekele has to semi-subsistence farmers is impressive. It has worked with over 580 local groups of farmers in over 400 villages. Innovations have covered poultry and animal raising, gardening, field crops, fruit trees and plantation crops over the years. Current improved varieties of manioc, peanuts and cowpeas promise to double agricultural production and expand opportunities for rural households as their use spreads. This is the fruit of a relative handful of Christian believers who have dedicated their lives to the Lord and to making the lives of neighbors who are even poorer than they are better.

Timothée has often said that ACDI’s work has prospered in a modest way only because God has protected and sustained it. This is my appeal to you to pray for Timothée and Marthe particularly.

• Thank the Lord for their sacrifice and the fruit they have borne
  
• Pray that the Lord will give them the tangible encouragement in their work and ministry.
• Ask the Lord for a vision of where Lusekele should go from here
• Pray that competent and enthusiastic young people will bring their energy to Lusekele
• Pray that Timothée will have the wisdom to seek out capabilities that Lusekele doesn’t yet have.

A working farm wagon

The crew from the oil palm processing operation load jugs of fresh palm oil on the new tractor wagon.

The wagon that Emmanuel Souza and I built a few weeks ago went on its maiden voyage last Friday. Filled with a load of palm oil jugs, the wagon followed the tractor down the hill from the garage to the Lusekele store. Internal roads at Lusekele have deteriorated over the years. So except for the flat expanse of the soccer field, the route included a steep descent and a couple of rough spots.

Kester Mukebwanga hitches up the wagon for its maiden voyage.

The goal is to reduce costs and shift workers to tasks that have a direct effect on improving production and profits. Producing palm oil profitably from its own small plantation is a key part of the strategy that ACDI has for sustaining its agriculture extension work. Transporting a single chunk of firewood can take a worker close to 30 minutes, time much better spent keeping the plantation clean and harvesting ripe fruit bunches.

Kester unloads the last jug of oil.

This week they are going to run the wagon through its paces: collecting palm fruit bunches, hauling sand from the stream near us, collecting dead wood that fuels the palm fruit boiler. Then comes the next lesson: how to organize the work to full advantage wagon capacity and time.