After four days travelling in Laos, including two along the MeKhong upstream from LuangPaBang to Chiang Khong ,and seeing NO good farm land management, numerous landslides taking croplands down into the red streams and swidden farming the whole way along the MeKhong except for occasional forest patches, this very pertinent email arrived. The sender is bird-watcher Khun Iain, formerly a tree planter with Gum Hak Doi Suthep, now living in the Shetland Islands.
Hi Ricky,
I have just been watching a documentary called “Up in Smoke” on the UK Channel 4 network – possibly available on-line. It tells the story of a British scientist, Mike Hands who has been working in Central America, mostly Honduras, for some years trying to reduce the negative effects of “slash & burn” cultivation. Apparently besides destroying the rain forests, slash& burn puts much more carbon into the atmosphere each year than all forms of carbon-emitting transport put together. He found that by planting a tree called Inga he could hold the nutrients in the soil.
The method of crop planting is called “alley cropping” as the crops (mostly maize & beans) are planted in “alleyways” through the Inga. Unlike traditional slash and burn where you get one good crop after the burn then the soil fertility drops off so you have to cut a new patch, with Inga the fertility remains pretty constant enabling multiple crops and the the subsistence farmers can remain in one place.
For whatever reason he has been unable to convince the world that this system works, though he has had considerable success with farmers in Honduras who once they saw the system in action were quick to adopt it as it provides them with sustainable crops, involves much less work than slash and burn every year and also enables them to stay put on one bit of land rather than moving on every few years. I understand that Inga species are all native to South & Central America and belong to the Mimosa family. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find a native S. E. Asian tree that would do the same thing!
The above is a very short précis of a much more complicated story but with half of Borneo, Indonesia, Thailand & Lao going up in smoke every year this approach must be worth investigating.
Let me know when you’ve cracked it!
Cheers, Iain
Farmland erosion in Laos , September 2011
Well Iain, there have been attempts at cracking the problem here e.g. promising trials of Peltophorum dasyrrhachis, a native of these parts but to the traveller’s eye no implementation of alley cropping.
Perhaps some of our farming readers can bring us up-to-date?
In northern Thailand and probably Laos and Vietnam “Alley Cropping” was introduced in the mid eighties. GO and NGO gave attention to this technology through input from various institutions in Asia, in particular the “Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Centre” MBRLC. The MBRLC promoted this concept of soil conservation under the acronym of “SALT Farming” / Sloping Agriculture Land Technology, under which name it is well known in VN, Philippines. In Thailand and Laos GO and NGO use local terms which mainly refer to ‘ contour farming’ , an alternative term for alley cropping.
I have read about the Inga tree, which according to my knowledge is not cultivated in this region. I myself have been involved with extension work of AC during my time of work with McKean Rehab Center (MRC) We used NFT species which are available in Thailand and seeds of which were made available by LDD and other agencies.
Alley Cropping can be managed with establishment of contour hedges as a temporary or permanent measure. Therefore species to plant the hedgerows may be shrubs (Cajanus cajan, tephrosia sp, Flemengia m.) or tree species (Leucaena, Tephrosia teysmanii, Gliricidia s.) Since many years, LDD in cooperation with the Royal Projects is promoting contour farming by planting of Vetiver Grass ( yah faek ) which also is considered an effective SWC measure.
Despite it’s benefits Alley Cropping is mainly practiced under particular project programs but rarely by farmer to farmer extension. There is a longer list of reasons why many farmers in SEA hesitate to adopt Alley Cropping. I personally also would like to advocate use of gm/cc (green manure /cover crops) , mulching , crop rotations which more often would fit with their resources and abilities.
Thanks very much to Klaus for providing some local details. At fisrt I was stumped by some of the abbreviations LDD Land Development Department or Pattana Tidin in Thai, SWC Soil & Water Conservation (thanks Google) and easier SEA South East Asia.
Klaus’s preference for gm/cc (no, not genetically modified but green manure cover crops) reads to me just like the Inga exmple. One obvious drawback with present farming methods as shown in the picture above, is the landslides resulting from removal of all the forest trees. The close contour planting of trees, with their cooperative root networks would seem to be a much more effective measure than planting vetiver grass, which I would imagine is only effective at reducing surface soil loss, and then only on gently sloping land.
I wonder if the connection of vetiver grass with the Thai state ideology prevents the authorities here developing the gm/cc model?
After travelling through Laos, and witnessing the destruction and grinding poverty of some of the people I saw, I would dearly love to see better farming practiced. I am no advocate of the privatisation of matters of public concern, but I wonder if an Eco-tourist approach along the Mekong River could help? If some of the rotational farmers could be persuaded to let their last abandoned field to be planted with contour alleys of trees by travellers and tended by them to the stage where intercropping could begin, we could see some very visible improvements?
More broadly can the factors inhibiting SEA farmers from taking the gm/cc route be better spelled out and tackled withthe help of those of us so concerned about the annual smoke haze about to afflict Chiang Mai in the coming months?
Slash & burn is a hot topic every year here in Malaysia but is disguised as the ‘annual haze issue’. Quickly forgotten by the politicians after a bit of bleating (I think a lot of them book their European holidays, to coincide).
I have tried to raised the issue a few times, with a ‘slash&char’ bias for further study. The reasons will be complex & regionally specific but maybe with some over-riding issues (poverty being the main one!).
Check out two competing theories for Borneo, recently presented… http://sea-biochar.blogspot.com/2011/10/regional-haze-issue-slash-char-solution.html
As for vetiver, their are a bunch of experts & proponents that are active and maintain a vigorous dialogue around the world… I shall send this discussion into their discussion group for comment. They could well be part of a solution & well worth a pilot scale project.
http://vetivernetinternational.blogspot.com/
Thanks for starting this thread, Ricky. Interesting stuff.
Farmers in Chiang Dao associated with the Upland Holistic Development Project (www.uhdp.org) practice contour cropping. UHDP recommends planting hedgerows of edible plants like pineapple, papaya, pigeon pea, coffee/tea, etc. These systems, together with adjacent agroforestry plots, provide some excellent examples of farmer-driven soil management. Visit in Feb or March and you can observe the contrast between burnt-over hills and lush green oases.
My friend Les Anwyl in Australia’s “Top End” (??) in northern Queensland grows vetiver grass and is very inspired by how deep rooting the plant can be. Vetiver is promoted for contour strips because of this fact, with roots stretching better than a meter deep. It can be cut back severely during the rains and dropped as mulch in the alleys.
Both contour stripping and vetiver grass have had a hard go in places like northern Thailand, in the main because they do not produce food or money in the short-term. (This fact is corrected by UHDP by promoting edible plants for the strips, rather than the usual nitrogen-fixing plants). It’s a very hard sell to tell a farmer he should grow a plant, only to cut it and throw it upon the ground.
A reasonable small farmer would only do such things if she had secure land tenure and a multi-generational commitment to farming a given area of land. Alley cropping is about soil conservation and improvement. If it’s someone else’ land, or you’re worried about getting chucked off because of some government program in the name of conservation, then why bother? The well-fed can preach to the hungry about the environment, but only in vain.
I think you’re onto something with your question about eco-tourism, but I wouldn’t expect much hard-labor contributions from the comfortable class. I believe that farmers respond quite well to market signals. Not “The (mythical) Market” in the neoliberal imagination, but “markets,” lower case, as in you and me buying food and goods. When we go to the local fresh market or food stall or supermarket, we’re sending a clear signal to the farmers: “Burn it up, spray it with poison, give yourself cancer, we don’t care. Just keep it cheap. And shut up about your stinking poverty. We don’t care.”
When we buy local organic (not one or the other, but both), we send the opposite signal: “If you grow food in a way that heals the land and the health of both growers and consumers, we’ll throw in a few extra baht in the bargain.”
If there were a way that Mekong tourists, and especially residents, could reward farmers for reducing burning, tillage and sprays, and reward them for alley cropping, agroforestry and mulching, etc., that would go a lot farther than any of the high-handed government schemes that have been cooked up (and failed) in the last 50 years.
But as long as the Lao peasants are farming state land under the threat of eventual eviction and their kids are abandoning agriculture for the service economy (and one can’t blame them for that), and as long as there’s an economic reward (feeble as it may be) for bad farming practices, it’s hard to imagine the haze dissipating any time soon.
The stick doesn’t work. And in a region sorely lacking in anything approaching democracy, to advocate the stick is to advocate strengthening tyrants. We need carrots, and a lot of them.
Thanks for these thoughtful comments Jeff. I have invited Filip Debruyne who works in Laos and retired Peter Hoare with much experience there to comment.
The issue of land rights is also central to the comments of Francis Ng ex Forest Research Institute of Malaysia about forest destruction in Kalimantan.
Browsing the Vetiver site I get the impression it is often something of a rich man’s tool with one report of establishment costing $16/m2. One thing impressing me about the Inga story was its ability to do weed control by shading, as well as sustaining soil fertility.
Dear Ricky,
If you have the impression that Vetiver is something of a rich man’s solution, it may be because several of its applications are often best promoted through the private sector. And then we talk about its use to treat waste water (small or large scale), protecting infrastructure (roads, waterways, dams, dikes – in a sector where engineers are not impressed by something that is ‘cheap’), landscaping.
But when it comes to its use on-farm, in Africa, there is no cheaper solution. In Kenya 1 slip costs 5 Ksh (0.05 USD), so it costs 0.35 USD per linear metre of hedge. The current advice to farmers is to construct contour banks: these are more costsly in terms of labour to establish as well as to maintain, and worse: they take up more space, and not to mention the risk of breaking.
Only last Sunday I was on a farm, where the farmer had used Vetiver since 2008 and decided that the constructed contours were not necessary (she leveled them away, and planted crops in that place).
Gentlemen, what Mike Hands was doing in the Honduras was ‘Quesengual’
(Google for.) As for alternatives to Inga, try your local leucaena species. That, plus contouring with Vetiver, pole cuttings alley cropping etc are all on my website. See the trifinio article n the publications page. Ken Calvert.
http://www.coffee.20m.com/CoffeePropagation/Trifinio%20General%20Project%20Outline.pdf
I saw the “Up in Smoke” film and realised it shows a form of ‘Conservation Agriculture’ CA/CF.
I then checked on the Web and found similar ‘alley cropping’ is done all around the world. Why did Mike our hero not know about this?
Is there anyone who wants to join me in broadcasting the wonderful benefits from CA?
I have started making leaflets but need help.
At present NO information is produced for smallholders that want to try out CA for themselves!
All training is ‘hands on’ which is wonderful but limited to a few thousand farmers!
Graham
Hi Klaus,
I hear you problem and understand your frustration all too well. Forty years ago I lived in Khon Kaen and witnessed the scale of forest destruction after dam construction roads were built into virgin forest. I returned 20 years later to see the long term impacts and noted how slow the natural regeneration was occurring. That area had become a National Park and so farming was no longer officially allowed. Only bamboo had returned by that time. I also visited experimental sites where the early use of vetiver was being trialled as an alternative, with some success.
I travelled by boat up the Mekong from Vientiane in 2006 and was not happy with the steep slopes that were being cleared for maize production with no sign of erosion control measures. Despite extension efforts in Thailand the value of vetiver is not being recognised and the technique is obviously not being adopted.
Over the last 20 years I have been using vetiver to reforest extremely eroded sites in the South West Pacific. This document has a brief summary on pages 62 – 63: http://data.iucn.org/dbtw-wpd/edocs/2011-012.pdf
During this work observations have shown that vetiver can be incorporated quite simply into the traditional shifting fallow system along with a nitrogen fixing tree such as Gliricidia. This combination has the ability to maintain soil nitrogen while preventing the soil of soil particles. As much fertility loss is caused by soil erosion the contour vetiver rows maintain soil fertility as well.
It is important to note that the traditional shifting fallow cultivation systems used in most of the islands of Vanuatu do not involved large scale land clearance but rely on each family having a number of small plots that are returned to on a regular basis. (They grow root crops rather than grains, and these require a smaller land area.) Hence planting contour vetiver hedges is not a short term, one-off solution, but hopefully a long term strategy as the hedges appear to survive from one clearing cycle to the next.
A few relevant points:
Subsistence farmers dare not change their normal traditional ways of farming, as if the change they make is the wrong one they will starve. They will need to witness the success of any new method over a number of years before they will consider adopting it. Long term (10 to 20 year) demonstration sites are essential. How many aid programs last that long? How many program fund managers understand the problem?
Garden productivity is dependent on more than just nitrogen levels. Soil type is fundamental, but a fallow – burning cycle returns other essential nutrients to the soil while reducing both crop pests and weed seeds. Weed infestations are a major reason that farmers shift to a new site as their ability to weed is restricted by labour availability.
Most non-shifting cultivation systems require artificial fertiliser inputs and these are beyond the reach of most subsistence farmers. In addition the carbon released in the manufacture of those fertilisers must be weighed against that released by burning during the cultivation cycle.
Two N fixing trees you could try, apart from Inga, would be the local variety of Coral tree (Erythrina variegata L – Thong lang) and Rosewood (Pterocarpus indicus). I have some evidence that a variety of Erythrina has been used traditionally for that purpose in Vanuatu. Note that a gall wasp is causing survival problems with some varieties. I have used Rosewood cuttings as a nitrogen source in some conservation plantings. Note that the host potential for diseases and disease vectors should be determined.
Be careful of offering advice that hasn’t been thought through properly. A number of years ago in Shan State a number of foreign experts were condemning a local agricultural practice that involved heating the sites of potato plants with small fires. However, without that practice, the crops failed. In fact the heat released a small amount of phosphate from the depleted soils and the smoke acted as a soil sterilant – not a harmful practice at all!
Don Miller
20 McCormick’s Rd
Whatamango Bay
RD1, Picton
New Zealand
Phone: 64 3 573 5118
Mobile: 6421 189 1525
donmillernz@gmail.com
The following was sent from Ron in Brazil. He is a member of Biochar-policy@yahoogroups.com :
A biochar-scientist who has put a lot of his emphasis on trying to do away with “slash-and-burn” is Dr. Christoph Steiner. See a free extended summary of his Doctoral thesis at:
http://www.biochar.org/joomla/images/stories/SteinerPhDSummary.pdf
Bill, a former long time resident of NW Laos sent this recollection:
“I remember that there was a project in Luang Prabang supported by the Swedes where they were trying to introduce this very same type of farming. Clearly, it never got very far. But I do not know the reasons why. I suspect the ideas were not effectively disseminated. There is no training or support for land management in Laos. There is no concept of land management. A mentality that is based on slash/burn from a earlier time when the population was small still prevails.”
This prompted some thoughts of mine own. My home is in Nan province where there are occaional meetings with local government officers from both the Thai & Lao side of the common land border. Uttaradit & Loei also border on Laos.
I wonder if there could be some improvement if there were some joint projects doing the same kind of land management improvement on both sides of the border? This could be done under the auspices of the ASEAN agreement on Cross Border Haze.
Iain from the Shetland Isles who initited this discussion, after overcoming problems of remote communication has sent:
I feel that one of Don Millar’s observations is not necessarily true. He says that subsistence farmers dare not change their farming methods…., well some farmers in Honduras were pretty quick to change once they saw the advantages. If you consider some of the King’s projects in Thailand changes were also brought about pretty quickly, admittedly with a certain amount of coercion and a large input of money. I agree that “conservation agriculture” is not a quick fix and that it may well take 10 years or so to become accepted but in 10 years time the remaining forests will be even more under threat than they are now.
The BBC announced yesterday that the world population is currently increasing by 200,000 PER DAY with the highest birth rates in “developing countries”! I suspect that all efforts are in vain and the planet is doomed ; )
One of the key features of the Honduras projects was the use of a native species of tree. When non-native plants are used in agricultural projects, for example vetiver, eucalyptus, sitka spruce these produce largely sterile environments because the associated insects and birds which evolved alongside those plant species are not present. It would be great to find some native tree species in SE Asia that could do a similar job to Inga.
As a footnote Ricky would add that Iain when in Thailand has described rubber plantations as (bird) deserts.