Green
Manures: The Real Magic Beans
Hello once again from Paraguay!
This week has been a walk down memory lane as I got a visit from a
volunteer-in-training. That’s right my “sister-G” the next round of Agriculture
volunteers, have been in Paraguay for about two weeks. As part of the training
they get to visit current volunteers twice: once for a short visit by
themselves (that was this week) and then again with three other trainees and a
language teacher (in November). The idea of the first visit is just to take a
rest from the hectic training schedule, get to see “what volunteer life is
like,” and learn more about Paraguay. The second visit has more of a language
focus—trainees stay with a Paraguayan host family for three days, give a
presentation in Guarani or Spanish, etc. Anyway, it was pretty fun to have a
visit from a trainee “fresh off the plane” and remember how nervous I was back
then and how new and different everything was in Paraguay. Also my trainee
visitor was awesome and she taught me how to play rummy. It was a great week!
Last week I just finished up a five week class on green manures which has been my biggest
(successful) project so far in site. During my “needs assessment phase” when I
went and talked to many of the families in the community, it became pretty
clear that people had noticed a lack of fertility in their fields. Or rather,
they weren’t getting an ideal amount of produce from their fields. Many of the
families here have been farming their land constantly for decades, so it’s not
surprising that the soil is a little low on plant nutrients. One of the ways of
fertilizing fields (organically/low cost) is with manure. While many families
do put cow and pig manure in their fields, they generally don’t have enough
manure to really provide enough fertilizer for all their fields (most people
have 3 cows or less and same with pigs).
As I have mentioned previously, another way to
return nutrients to the soil is through the use of green manures/cover
crops—there are plants that cover the soil fast and when they are cut down, the
rotted remains add nutrients to the soil (like a large scale compost pile).
Cover crops related to beans (such as vetch and clover commonly used on organic farms in the states) actually make
their own nitrogen, one of the most important nutrients for plant growth, and
add it back into the soil. Since my site is very near a city with a branch of
the Department of Agricultural Extensionists, of course many people have heard
of green manures. However, most of the farmers in my community have not tried
using green manures in their fields or they aren’t familiar with many
varieties. There are perhaps a hundred reasons why people don’t use green
manures in my community. Two reasons I could address: lack of
familiarity/education about soil (why it would be important to use cover crops)
and lack of a consistent source for seeds).
I decided to teach a five week class (meeting
once a week) about green manures, where participants would receive seeds for
seed production after attending three classes. I didn’t have enough seeds to
give people for a whole field, but if they planted and produced seeds this
year, the farmers would be able to plant a whole field of green manures next
year. The classes were really fun. It was a great way for me to see who was
excited and interested in green manures and get to know some community members
a bit better. It was definitely a challenge to present in Guarani for an hour
(because I get stage fright in English!). Sometimes, I would look at people and
realize that while I believed I was speaking in Guarani, they clearly had no
idea what I was trying to say. But I also watched people learn new things about
their soil and crops, and through repetition and review, they seemed to retain
the concepts—such as plant families (did you know that tomatoes, potatoes,
eggplant, and peppers are all in the same family?!), nutrients in the soil,
etc. During my favorite class, I had participants draw their fields and
throughout the class, they marked where they wanted to plant green manures and
what variety would best serve there.
Next step: visiting all the participants to see
if they planted the seeds/have any questions…stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment