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EDN Numéro 130 - Maintenant disponible

EDN Numéro 130 - Maintenant disponible 2016-04-01

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Extrait: Les contaminants des pneus dans une perspective de cultures en contenants

En essayant de trouver des contenants de plantation abordables dans les pays en développement, les organisations et les travailleurs ont partout favorisé l’utilisation d’une ressource de déchets facilement disponible: les pneus. Au fil des ans, beaucoup ont demandé à savoir si oui ou non les pneus contiennent des produits chimiques nocifs qui pourraient s’introduire dans vos cultures. Cet article a été écrit pour communiquer ce que nous avons trouvé après des recherches dans la littérature sur le sujet.

Une grande partie de la littérature sur le sujet se rapporte à des pneus qui ont été recyclés en petites particules. Comparativement à la paroi latérale d’un contenant en pneu, la surface du pneu en contact avec la terre de plantation est beaucoup plus grande avec de petits morceaux de caoutchouc. Une grande partie des informations disponibles se rapporte également à des toxines dans des cendres de pneus brûlés ou celles lixiviées à partir de matériaux de pneumatiques soumis à des solutions fortement acides. Les contenants de jardin en pneus ne sont pas bien sûr convertis en cendres. En outre, la terre utilisée pour faire pousser les plantes dans des pneus n’est presque pas aussi acide que les solutions souvent utilisées pour étudier les contaminants dans les lixiviats de pneus.

Néanmoins, les pneus contiennent bel et bien des quantités infimes de quatre métaux qui sont connus pour être toxiques pour l’homme. La plupart des discussions ci-dessous se rapporte à des éléments métalliques, mais il y a aussi une brève discussion sur les contaminants organiques. L’article se termine avec des pratiques suggérées pour rendre le jardinage dans les pneus aussi sûr que possible. Cet article ne vise pas à être exhaustif ou définitif. En fonction des commentaires et de ce que nous aurons appris, nous sommes ouverts à des articles de complément....

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Télécharger et partager des notes de développement #130

West African farmers benefit from in-field trainings

West African farmers benefit from in-field trainings 2016-03-28

Training participants in Koaran, Burkina Faso are praising the qualities of local workshops held in their community. Located about 250km from the capital, Ouagadougou, this remote village is one that is benefitting from farmer-to-farmer instruction.

Across West Africa, this educational style has proven to be effective and desirable. Groups are usually limited to about 30 farmers, but due to enthusiasm, recent trainings have included more than 50 participants.

These events cover a wide range of agricultural practices, underutilized crops, and appropriate technologies such as FFF(FGW), family gardens, Moringa, biogas, and small-scale livestock.

The advantages of these "in-context" trainings are felt by both teachers and participants. Presenters are better able to understand the village's unique situation and available resources; and report that participants follow closely to whomever is teaching and ask a lot of questions.

West Africa   FFF   Moringa   Biogas   Field Training   Agriculture Extension  

Empowering Tanzanian women using environmentally-conscious initiatives

Empowering Tanzanian women using environmentally-conscious initiatives 2016-03-14

Waste plastic shopping bags are a plentiful resource that can be found in fields, along roadsides, and in garbage piles around the world. By repurposing this resource, MIT students in Arusha Tanzania are empowering women and improving the environment through a plastic recycling program.

The project aims to improve the lives of people in three ways: First the project aims to reduce the amount of waste plastic bags and increase environmental awareness by emphasizing the potential usefulness of "waste products." Second, the project aims to provide an economic opportunity to women by creating new products out of the plastic bags. And finally, the project provides customers with quality, environmentally-conscious products such as reusable grocery bags.

A bag made of repurposed 'plarn' or yarn derived from waste plasticThrough interactive workshops, women are learning how to create plastic yarn, or plarn, from waste plastic. Each workshop also includes a design challenge which is meant to urge participants to be creative and think of new ways to use the repurposed material. During these challenges the women are divided into teams to design an outfit using just 5 plastic bags, tape, and scissors. The exercise attempts to show the versatility of the bags and the potential of creating new products.

The Tanzanian women involved in the initiative commonly create economic income by creating artisinal products such as soap or jewelry. The plarn products add a potential additional income source with little to no cost of materials for the artisans. As the plarn makes attractive and useful reuseable shopping bags a disposable product is turned into a more durable alternativel and a new, more environmentally conscious, product is introduced into the marketplace.

ECHO TN #82 SICA, El Sistema Intensificado de Cultivo de Arroz: Menos Puede Ser Más - Está Disponible ahora en español

ECHO TN #82 SICA, El Sistema Intensificado de Cultivo de Arroz: Menos Puede Ser Más - Está Disponible ahora en español 2016-02-26

Extracto: El Sistema Intensificado de Cultivo de Arroz (SICA) es un método de cultivar el arroz que produce las cosechas bastante más fructíferas con la siembra de muchas menos plantas de semillero y el uso de menos aportes que cualquier método tradicional (p.ej., la inundación) o más “moderno” (usar el fertilizante o agroquímicos). Este enfoque involucra usar varias prácticas para administrar las plantas, el suelo, el agua, y los nutrientes. SICA ha tenido éxito por estar usado en varios países y ha sido promovido extensivamente por el Dr. Norman Uphoff con la Universidad de Cornell.

¿Qué es SICA?

SICA involucra el uso de una combinación de las prácticas de administración que optimizan las condiciones para crecer las plantas de arroz, particularmente en la zona de las raíces. Fue desarrollado en Madagascar temprano en los 1980 por el Padre Henri de Laulaníe, un padre jesuita quien pasó más de 30 años trabajando con los agricultores en ese país. En 1990, la Asociación de Tefy Saina (ATS) se fundó como una ONG malgacha para promover SICA. Cuatro años después, el Instituto Internacional para la Agricultura, la Alimentación, y el Desarrollo (CIIFAD) [Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development] empezó colaborando con Tefy Saina para introducir el SICA alrededor del Parque Nacional Ranomafana en el este de Madagascar, respaldado por la agencia estadounidense para el desarrollo internacional. Desde entonces, ha sido probado en China, India, Indonesia, las Filipinas, Sri Lanka, y Bangladesh con resultados positivos.

Leer la Nota Técnica completa aquí.

SRI   SRI System Of Rice...  

A new pulse variety from the ECHO Global Seed Bank

A new pulse variety from the ECHO Global Seed Bank 2016-02-25

The FAO has named 2016 the Year of the Pulse. The ECHO Florida seed bank is now offering ‘Caqui’ pigeon pea seeds, a variety originally acquired from Agroforester Tropical Seeds in Hawaii. Pigeon peas are small bushing legumes that are drought tolerant and can be grown on a wide variety of soils. They are often used in intercropping, as hedgerows for windbreaks, and for shade for when establishing plantation crops. Being a legume, pigeon peas fix nitrogen and can be utilized to increase soil fertility. The foliage of pigeon peas makes an excellent livestock fodder and the stems can be used for firewood. Most notable are the edible peas, which can be shelled when young and green or harvested when mature as a dry bean

‘Caqui’ is a variety that performed very well on the global farm this winter. It is a long duration pigeon pea (about 200 days to harvest) and the branches were loaded with seed pods. If you are a member of ECHO Community (Active Development Worker or Individual Premium), you can order a trial packet of these seeds to try out in your area.

Did you know? It's the year of the Pulse!

Did you know? It's the year of the Pulse! 2016-02-18

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has announced that 2016 is the "International Year of Pulses." The FAO defines pulses as a type of leguminous crop that is harvest solely for the edible dry seed. Common examples include dried beans, lentis, and peas. Packed with nutrients; these crops deliver both a high protien content and high levels of soluble fiber. Pulses are an important crop for farmers when considering improving food security and marketability. Recommended by health organizations, pulses can be beneficial to people suffering with diabetes and various heart conditions.

Since pulses are nitrogen fixing, these crops are known for improving soil fertility and extending the productivity of the land. Pulses are appropriate for small-scale farmers, often utilized in techniques such as intercropping, rotational agriculture, and as cover crops. Their versatility promotes biodiversity and assists in the minimization of pests and some diseases. 

How have pulses been an important part of your work? Share in the COMMENTS.

Additional resources on pulses:

ECHO Note Technique #76 - "Production de charbon de bois dans des fours à tambour horizontaux de 200 litres" maintenant disponible en français

ECHO Note Technique #76 - "Production de charbon de bois dans des fours à tambour horizontaux de 200 litres" maintenant disponible en français 2016-02-18

Extrait: Jusqu’à récemment, le bois de chauffe était pris pour acquis dans le nord de la Thaïlande. Avec de vastes forêts pleines de nombreux types d’arbres, les ménages des hautes terres pouvaient se permettre d’être difficiles concernant le bois qu’ils utilisaient pour la cuisine.

Cependant, au cours des dernières années, de plus en plus de communautés font face à des restrictions d’accès aux produits forestiers en raison de la création de parcs nationaux. Dans de nombreuses régions, la déforestation causée par des activités agricoles, tels que l’intrusion des grandes plantations, entraîne également la réduction de l’accès au bois de chauffe.

Dans les communautés des hautes terres, les combustibles de cuisson de types commerciaux comme le propane ne sont pas facilement accessibles et abordables. Avec des choix limités, les communautés et les organisations de développement ont commencé à envisager les combustibles alternatifs.

Lire l'article complet ici.

ကျောင်းဥယျာဉ်စီမံချက်မှ ဒုက္ခသည်ကျောင်းသူကျောင်းသားမျာအား မျှော်လင့်ချက်ယူဆောင်လာပေးပါသည်

ကျောင်းဥယျာဉ်စီမံချက်မှ ဒုက္ခသည်ကျောင်းသူကျောင်းသားမျာအား မျှော်လင့်ချက်ယူဆောင်လာပေးပါသည် 2016-02-09

မလေးရှားနိုင်ငံ၊ ပီနန်တွင်ရှိသော ဒါလတ်(Dalat) အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာကျောင်းမှ အခြေခံမူလ ဥယျာဉ်စိုက်ပျိုး ရေး ကလပ်သည် မြန်မာရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်များကို ကူညီရန်ကြိုးပန်းနေကြသည်။ ထိုကလပ်သည် ကောင်းမွန် ပြည့်စုံသော ဥယျာဉ်စိုက်ပျိုးရေးကျင့်စဉ်များနှင့် မြေဆီမပါသည့် သဲ၊ ကျောက်၊ နှင့်ရေများတွင်အဟာရဖြည့်၍ စိုက်ပျိုးခြင်း(hydroponics)၏နောက်ခံသဘောတရားများကိုသင်ယူရန်တစ်ပတ်လျှင်တစ်ကြိမ်တွေ့ဆုံကြသည်။ ကျောင်းသားများသည် ဟင်းနုနွယ်အမျိုးအစားနှစ်မျိုးကိုသေးငယ်၍သယ်ယူပြောင်းရွှေ့နိုင်သည့် မြေဆီမပါ-အဟာရဖြည့်၍ စိုက်ပျိုးခြင်း(hydroponics) ယူနစ်အပေါ်တွင်စိုက်ပျိုးလုပ်ဆောင်လျက် ရှိကြသည် - ဒေသရှိအမျိုးနှင့်ဘရာဇီးနိုင်ငံမှ အမျိုးများဖြစ်သည့်ဟင်းနုနွယ်နှစ်မျိုးစလုံးကောင်းစွာကြီးထွားကြသည်။

သူတို့၏သင်တန်းပို့ချသူ လီစာ မွန်စန် (Lisa Munson)မှတဆင့် ကျောင်းသားများတို့သည် ပီနန်ဒုက္ခသည် ကျောင်းအား ဤအဟာရဖြည့် စိုက်ပျိုးသည့်ပစ္စည်းကရိယာများကိုမျှဝေကြရန်အထောက်အကူပေးခြင်းဖြင့် ထိုနေရာတွင်ရှိသော ကျောင်းသားများကိုကူညီရန်နည်းလမ်းတစ်ခုအနေဖြင့််ပြုလုပ်ကြသည်။

Garden at Dalat International Schoolဒုက္ခသည်ကျောင်းတွင်ရှိသောအပင်အများစုတို့သည်ကောင်းမွန်စွာကြီးထွားနေပြီး ကျောင်းသားများအား အပင်များကိုကြည့်ရှုရမည့် တာဝန်ချမှတ်ပေးခဲ့ခြင်းသည် သူတို့အတွက်အပြုသဘောဆောင်သည့် အခွင့်အရေး ကောင်းဖြစ်ခဲ့သည်။ သို့သော် ဒုက္ခသည်တို့၏အခြေအနေများကိုဝန်းရံလျက်နေသောပြဿများကြောင့် စိုက်ပျိုး သော အပင်အားလုံးတို့သည် သော့ခတ်ထားသည့်တံခါးများ၏နောက်တွင်ကြီးထွားနေရသည်၊ အပင်များကို အပြင်ဘက်တွင်စိုက်ပျိုးပါက ခိုးယူခြင်းခံရနိုင်ချေရှိပါသည်။ အခန်းတွင်းအခြေအနေသည် အချို့သောအပင်များ ကိုသေစေပါသည်၊ သို့သော် ဒန့်ဒလွန်၊ ပင်စိမ်းနှင့် ဟင်းနုနွယ်များတို့သည်ကောင်းစွာကြီးထွားနေဆဲဖြစ်ပါသည်။

ပို၍များသောအချက်အလက်ရင်းမြစ်မျး-

မြေဆီမပါ-အဟာရဖြည့်၍ စိုက်ပျိုးခြင်း(hydroponics)နှင့်ပတ်သက်သည့်အရင်းအမြစ်များ

Asia   Aquaponics  

EDN Issue 130 - Now Available

EDN Issue 130 - Now Available 2016-01-25

In This Issue:

Download EDN 130

 

Excerpt: Tire Contaminants from a Container Gardening Perspective

When trying to find affordable planting containers in the developing world, organizations and workers all over have promoted the use of a readily-available waste resource: tires. Over the years, many have asked whether or not tires contain harmful chemicals that could potentially be taken up by your crops. This article is written to communicate what we found from our search of literature on this topic.

Much of the literature on the subject pertains to tires that have been recycled into small particles. In comparison to the side wall of a tire container, the tire surface area in contact with growing media is much greater with small chunks of rubber. Much of the information available also pertains to toxins in the ash of burnt tires, or those leached from tire material subjected to strongly acidic solutions. Tire garden containers, of course, are not being converted to ash.

Furthermore, the media used to grow plants in tires is not nearly as acidic as the solutions often used to study contaminants in tire leachate.
Nevertheless, tires do contain trace amounts of four metals that are known to be toxic to humans. Most of the discussion below relates to metallic elements, but there is also brief discussion of organic contaminants. The article concludes with suggested practices to make tire gardening as safe as possible...

[ Read The Full Article ]

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ECHO Research Blog Update

ECHO Research Blog Update 2016-01-07

Dr. Tim Motis recently posted a follow up to his July 2015 post on ECHO's 2-4-2 maize/cowpea trial.  This update presents some of the data that has been collected to date.

When the legumes were sampled in July, the above-ground biomass of both weeds and legumes were sampled.  Weeds made up less than 3% of the biomass in cowpea and jackbean plots.  Weed biomass in the mucuna plots was statistically similar to that with cowpea and jackbean.  Legume biomass was greater with jackbean (2.9 tonnes per hectare) than cowpea (1.9 tonnes per hectare) and mucuna (1.6 tonnes per hectare)...

For the full results, methodology and charts read the full blog posting (Login Required).

Your feedback is appreciated, be sure to post in the blog post's comments.

Related Resources:

 

Intercropping