Fertility trenches are being promoted by Self Help Africa in Kenya as a means of optimising vegetable production, while at the same time ensuring that the soil in small-holding farms does not lose it's nutrients, and ability to produce crops in future years.
The system requires farmers to excavate a two feet deep trench on a portion of their farm holding, laying the sub-soil to one side, and filling the trench with vegetation, manure, and the top soil that was first removed.
Within the trench the farmers are encouraged to grow kale, cabbage and other vegetable crops, while on the mound of sub-soil they plant sweet potato, beans and legumes.
Farmers using the fertility trench system have found that their vegetable yields have increased considerably, while an effective rotation of the trench approach around their holding will ensure a continuous high yield of vegetables - without effecting the long term fertility of the soil.
'I have been using this trench system on a part of my land for more than a year now, and have managed to produce far higher yields of vegetables than were possible in the past', says Francis Kafui from Kiambogo, in Self Help's Gilgil project area in Kenya. |
