Farmers in Senegal learn to respect a scruffy shrub that gets no respect
For decades, they've been told to rip out the Guiera senegalensis shrub. But now there's a new philosophy: The scrappy green plant could be the key to a better harvest.
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Obviously this doesn’t fit the US model, but for truly small producers it appears to be a very interesting thought process.
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The shrub intercropping method, which researchers call the "Optimized Shrub System," is a turn away from conventional advances in agriculture, which incorporate large-scale, mechanized agriculture practices that rely heavily on fertilizers. In addition to the costs associated with industrial agriculture – out of reach for many smallholder farmers – the land in the Sahel has been under pressure from expanding fields and weakening soils for some time, says Salima Mahamoudou, a research associate for the World Resources Institute who is not involved in the research.
"There was the belief that in order to increase productivity, we needed to reduce all competition on the land, so we needed to cut off trees and shrubs," she says. "And we learned that it actually had the complete opposite effect. ...These areas were no longer able to retain moisture."
Using native shrubs like P. reticulatum and G. senegalensis echoes success seen in other parts of the Sahel that have reintroduced indigenous shrubs into farmers' fields, Mahamoudou says. "These are low-cost practices that farmers can do" to increase yields, increase soil health, regreen the land, and reduce fertilizer runoff.