FOUNDATIONS FOR FARMING AND CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE IN AFRICA

1. THE STORY OF FOUNDATIONS FOR FARMING

The story of Foundations for Farming began in the late 1970’s when Brian Oldrieve, a devout and committed Christian and Zimbabwean farmer, began to question the ethics of his successful tobacco farming practices and decided that he could better serve God by producing food crops. Against all advice, and despite farming in a sandveldt area with low rainfall, he followed his chosen path but encountered great trials and setbacks, eventually losing his farm as the banks refused to finance his preferred crops that were clearly unsuited for the area.

Brian eventually found work as a farm manager, but this farm was also in financial difficulties due to unsustainable farming practices; crop residue burning and deep ploughing were causing breakdown of the soil structure and serious erosion problems. Increasing amounts of money were being spent on land preparation, but yields continued to decline. Being a man of faith, Brian prayed for answers to his problems and was rewarded with the revelation that in nature there is no deep soil inversion and a thick blanket of fallen leaves and grass covers the surface of the soil. Brian immediately began to research ways of applying these ways of nature to his farming methods. Having heard about zero tillage from the tragedies of the Great Dust Bowl of Texas in the 1930’s, he began to experiment with these techniques, using a simple hoe, or badza, as his only implement. Eventually, Brian adopted the principles of zero tillage and began to adapt them to the conditions prevailing in Africa. Brian started out in faith, with just one hectare of maize planted directly into wheat straw, maintaining the highest standards possible to avoid failure. The results from this experimental plot were so much better than the rest of his crop, that he doubled the area under zero tillage the following season. Success followed success and Brian expanded his area under zero tillage rapidly, and within six years the whole farm of 1 000 hectares was flourishing under his system.

The resultant profits from these innovative methods enabled Brian to purchase surrounding farms and convert them to his pioneering techniques, and by 1995 he was growing 3 500 hectares under mechanised zero tillage systems. Brian soon realised that the successful techniques that he had developed should be shared, and used to alleviate poverty in the rural areas of Africa. He began an outreach programme in which he and his staff set up 58 demonstration plots throughout Zimbabwe, covering all natural regions and soil types. They quickly saw that the system, when implemented well, could be successful in any natural region except deserts, where there simply was not enough rainfall to support crops.

Brian began to promote the concepts of Conservation Agriculture, based on the following principles:

Minimal soil disturbance

Soil surface cover using cover cops or crop residues (mulch) Crop rotations to avoid pest and disease build-up

High standards of management

Coupled with this discovery was the realisation that, in order to bring rural African farmers out of poverty, they had to be shown and taught how to make a sustainable profit from farming. This was the bottom line. If expenditure exceeds income, farmers are making a loss. This is true of any business, from the individual small farmer up to the largest multinational corporation.

Brian discovered that there are three management factors that will determine whether a farmer will make a profit or not:

Everything should be done;

• on time

• at standard

• without wastage

If these factors are successfully implemented, then the farmer will make a profit. Brian later added a fourth factor, which speaks to work ethic, passion for the task at hand, productivity and output from the labour force. This is that everything should be done with joy His very simple implementation management teaching then became centred around these four important principles.