21 Jan 2025

Farmers in the Southern District have been urged to adopt moisture conservation farming techniques to enhance their crop yields, according to a recent statement from officials at the Southern District Rural Training Centre.

In an interview recently, Principal Technical Officer Ms Codellia Moloko emphasised the importance of these techniques. The centre has been actively conducting demonstrations to educate farmers on the use of a Ripper farming implement, which is designed to conserve soil moisture.

“Usually, farmers do not achieve significant produce due to the lack of water in our soils,” Ms Moloko explained.

She highlighted that by implementing these moisture conservation methods, farmers could improve their yields and contribute to the overall agricultural productivity of the region.

She said the centre encouraged moisture conservation, because Botswana”s semi-arid climate meant that  it received low to medium rainfall, adding that when rain falls, water would collect in the ripped soil rows and slowly soak into the soil leading to the field retaining water for some time.

Ms Moloko said ploughing using a moldboard plough, created a hard-pan soils each time the soil was being ploughed, thereby reducing the soil depth as well and ability to absorb water.     

She said normally ripping was done in winter, to prepare for rainwater collection and that it was a cost effective technique as it only required the area to be planted. Concerning the   ongoing demonstration project, she said it illustrated ripping and application of herbicides. 

She said though Sorghum was one of the dry land crops that could be planted during ripping, it was a highly labour intensive crop in terms of attention, and was susceptible to bird feasting when planted at small-scales as it was commonly the case amongst farmers today, a situation that might demoralise farmers.

This, Ms Moloko said, saw many farmers resorting to maize planting, something she said meant that the country would import sorghum to feed the nation.

Sales agronomy manager at SEEDCO, Mr Dialwa Kenatshele also shared sentiments, saying the technique was doable even by small scale farmers because there were ripping implements for small scale ploughs, which famers could use to enable them to practice the moisture conservation techniques.

He said for maximum results farmers could go an extra mile and apply mulch after planting,.He also said mulching also reduces weed growth hence it was cost effective.

However, he said if a farmer could not afford to rip the soil, they might do intercropping by planting rain-fed crops such as such as sorghum, maize, millet together with the ground cover crops such as beans or melons and other related crops. 

He said cover crops prevented moisture evaporation as their coverage prevents sunlight from overheating the soil that normally causes soil dryness. 

In addition, he said beans were not only preventing moisture runoff, but also deposit nutrients back into the soil.

Alternatively, Mr Kenatshele added that after planting a farmer could create basins (potholing). around the plants or group of plants at about 20m distances to collect water during rain.

This, he said allowed water to slowly infiltrate the soil and reach the plant roots.

On maize varieties to plant, he recommended white maize varieties; SC 419, SC403 and SC55 which were drought tolerant just like yellow maize.

 “The choice of these seeds has high chances of increased yield hence food self-sufficiency,” he said. ENDS