Combined Manure : A mixture For Success

Poor farmers in Africa are increasingly advised to fertilize their farm fields. Is this the best way forward?

Poor farmers in Africa are increasingly advised to fertilise their farm fields to improve soil fertility and, therefore, optimize produce, a dream they cherish in their whole life.
However, obtaining and using fertiliser is not as easy; chemical fertilisers are expensive and animal manure or compost is bulky and difficult to obtain in required quantities.

In Malawi, for example, a 50 kilogramme bag full of basal dressing fertilizer costs about 11 thousand kwacha while there are no onestop animal manure or compost availabilities.

Science has proven that use of chemical fertilizers has long term negative effects on soil texture, crop production and the environment. But there is some good news emerging.

Recent crop trials in Malawi suggest that using a combination of organic and inorganic fertiliser can give farmers good results. I spoke to crop scientist Moses Munthali, and asked him to explain more about the trials, and what they have revealed.

Any experienced farmer would agree that organic fertilisers supply most of the nutrients. On the other hand use of chemical fertilizer on its own can be very costly.

For example, crop scientist Moses Munthali, says if a farmer applies 92 kilogrammes of nitrogen per hectare then sh/e have to apply over eight tons or even 10 tons or 12 tons.

Realistically, very few farmers can afford to produce such quantities of manure.

 “That is why we wanted to see if we can possibly reduce the quantities, the quantities that farmers can manage to produce. But at the same time also, if you look at the chemical fertiliser, they are very expensive.

“Farmers are only able to get maybe one bag or two. So we wanted to see if we can make a combination to maximize production,” says Dr. Munthali.

How the research was done

“What we did was we used the compost manure alone and then we also used the chemical fertiliser alone and then we also combined. We use half nitrogen from the chemical fertiliser and then the other half from the organic fertilizer”.

“So from our findings we got 3.5 tons of maize grain yield from the organic fertiliser and then where we used only inorganic fertiliser we got 4.6 tons. While in combination of the chemical and organic we got 6.6 tons per hectare”.

According to Mr Munthali, this means if a farmer just use inorganic alone or organic alone get less than two tons but if they combine with chemical fertilizer they get over two and a half tons.

The combined use of organic manure and chemical fertilizer can indeed make a difference, if the views of one farmer from Malawi’s central region are anything to go by.

Mrs. Pansipowuma Ngoni from Dowa district uses a combination of organic manure and chemical fertilizer in her maize garden. But how long has she been doing this?

“I have been using organic manure and chemical fertiliser for three years. I do this because sometimes I lack money, so when I apply manure…organic manure I can still get something from my field”.

Mrs. Ngoni says when a farmer applies manure it is like you are retaining soil fertility in the soil and then your crops are usually healthy.

“We have some methods that we follow. We apply organic manure in the trenches or sometimes on the planting stations and then later on when we plant our crops, that is when we apply chemical fertilizer”, she says.

Challenges

There are usually some challenges when you want to transport your organic manure from home because we usually do this at home and we want to transport it from home to the gardens. It is usually a long distance and sometimes you are hurt in the process, says Mrs. Ngoni, adding that, in some cases you have like broken glasses in the manure and when you are trying to get it out from wherever you made the manure you get hurt.

For a rural farmer like Mrs. Ngoni is there any formal method to prove that mixing organic manure and chemical fertilizer. No. What matters to her is not the mathematics, but what she is able to see with her eyes.

“Usually I do not budget on how much money I save after I have combined the use of organic manure and chemical fertiliser but I see the difference because when you apply organic manure the bags that you apply of chemical fertiliser will be less than when you only use chemical fertiliser in your garden. I think there is a still a difference” she says

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