Seeing success from FFF in Nigeria

We recently received a report on the success of the Foundations for Farming method from Catherine who is working in Nigeria:

“Since I was a young girl I was interested in agriculture but had never had the opportunity to put it into practice until now, 40 years later. I discovered the FFF method of growing corn and I decided to try it instead of tiring out the soil each year. FFF reconstructs the soil and instead of costing more and more for farmers each year in fertilizer, it is less costly in the way one makes his or her own compost, uses mulch, and utilizes manure for building the soil. The most important thing of all, is that the production/harvest increases each year and the soil itself is improving in the process. […] I would often wake up very early, while it was still dark, and I would eat a good breakfast to prepare myself to work in the field for a few hours before the sun came up.”

The results were very impressive to Catherine. Her corn plants each had at least one large ear and sometimes even two on each stalk. She often noted that other farmers in many cases sometimes had only a few ears or often the ears were not fully formed.

“Many people saw my corn and stated that it was much larger and much better looking than theirs. I would occasionally share an ear with people as a gift but found when I would ask them how it tasted, I was often told that the individual had chosen to not eat it, but had kept it for seed for the following year. Others thought because I was white, that I must have brought the corn seed from another country. However, that is not what I actually did. Instead I went into the local market where grain is sold from one of my vendor friends and I asked for corn seed so that I could plant it.  I will continue to use FFF on my farm and share it with my neighbors and students and any other person who might be interested so that they might also learn the method and praise God for his abundance.”

Find out more through ECHOcommunity's Conservation Agriculture Resources

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