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839 items found (Showing 1 - 10)
  1. Key Resource 01/06/2013 Rick Burnette wrote an article for Issue 7(July 2010) of ECHO Asia Notes, titled “Charcoal Production in 200-Liter Horizontal Drum Kilns.” My article takes the charring process a step further by exploring the rapidly re-emerging world of biochar. Biochar is a form of charcoal, produced through...  
  2. Key Resource 28/09/2016 Farmers in many parts of the world, because of human population growth, have little choice but to crop their land continuously, with scarce resources to replace nutrients withdrawn by each successive crop. Crop residues are often lost as a source of organic matter and mulch, usually through...  
  3. Key Resource 21/09/2015 The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is a method of raising rice that produces substantially higher yields with the planting of far fewer seedlings and the use of fewer inputs than either traditional methods (i.e., flooding) or more “modern” methods (using mineral fertilizer or...  
  4. Key Resource 14/11/2012 The UNCCD estimates that over 250 million people are affected by land degradation, and about 1 billion people in over 100 countries are at risk. According to the WMO, 33% of the world’s land surface is vulnerable to land degradation.Degraded lands lead to overall reduced productivity and reduced...  
  5. Key Resource 26/02/2014 Pastoralism is a livelihood whereby people depend upon herding domesticated livestock. In East Africa, pastoralists depend primarily upon cattle, sheep, donkeys, goats and camels— listed in order of least resilience as one moves into drier and more arid lowland areas. Pastoralists play an...  
  6. Key Resource 17/05/2018 Many plants deemed as invaluable for the smallholder farmer offer nutritious food for the family, fodder for animals, or timber for construction. Remarkably, bamboo offers all three of these assets from the same perennial plant! This Technical Note will focus on how to most effectively harvest,...  
  7. Key Resource 01/04/2014 ECHO frequently receives questions from members of our network, asking how available land could be used to grow food and/or create income to augment an otherwise non-agricultural project. Broadly speaking, they are asking how to begin an institutional agriculture project—a coordinated agriculture...  
  8. Key Resource 21/03/2019 This Technical Note provides an overview of parasitic plants of agricultural significance in Africa. Parasitic weeds cause drought stress and stunted crops. Affected plants include cereal grains (e.g., sorghum [Sorghum bicolor] and maize [Zea mays]) and grain legumes (e.g., cowpea [Vigna...  
  9. Key Resource 01/01/2011 Often farmers asked for seed, but we weren’t quite sure what to expect when we suggested—to the farmers’ union in Nampula, Mozambique—that they organize a fair in which the members could come together and exchange seed. They might only be interested in “improved” varieties. However, when we...  
  10. Key Resource 09/06/2023 This guide expands on a summary by Chalermliamthong and Trail (2021) of the black soldier fly larvae production system at the ECHO Asia Small Farm Resource Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The production system there serves as an approach for scaling up larvae production as an alternative protein...