05 Mar 2017

Conservation agriculture has potential to improve crop yield, says agricultural extension officer Ms Sethembiso Kediseng.
Addressing farmers during a farm walk at Bikwe lands, Ms Kediseng said conservation agriculture was a set of soil management practices that minimised the disruption of the soil’s structure, composition and natural biodiversity.
Ms Kediseng said the method had proven its potential to improve crop yield, while improving the long-term environmental and financial sustainability of farming.
She informed farmers that the method involved three principles being minimum soil tillage, mix and crop rotation and soil cover.
She said the minimum soil tillage meant disturbing the soil as little as possible, adding that tillage was reduced by ripping planting lines or making holes for planting with a hoe.
She said the main idea was to plant direct into the soil, without plough as in the long term ploughing actually destroyed the soil structure and harrows could be replaced with rippers, subsoil and direct-drill planter.
She went on to explain the mix and crop rotation, saying mix cropping or intercropping meant planting the right mix of crops in the same field, like planting lab lab/cowpeas and maize, while crop rotation meant rotating crops from season to season, as that helped to maintain soil fertility.
Turning to soil cover she said it simply meant using crop residues left on the field to mulch and special cover crop to protect the soil from erosion and limit weed growth throughout the year, saying the most effective cover crops were of lab- lab and cowpeas residues.
Ms Kediseng explained the importance of conservation farming, noting that it helped in soil moisture conservation.
 It also reduces soil erosion and rain water run off when using basin planting system. She outlined the tools that can be used for conservation farming as ripper, hoe, subsoil and chisel plough.
Three farmers from Segakwana and Bikwe whom their fields were used for practicals shared with other farmers their experience on mix farming, basin/holes farming and the safety use of Glyphosate herbicide to kill weeds.
Ms Gabanamotse Kebatlhalefe and Mr Gabaratwe Keforile encouraged other farmers to fully utilise government farming methods and apply herbicide to kill weeds in their fields.
They urged fellow farmers to always put into practice what they had been taught by their field extension officers, saying by so doing they would get better yield.
Ms Otshugile Emmanuel said the basin/hole planting products were doing well and said they would stick to the methods as it brought better results as compared to other methods especially on maize. ENDS