A Long History of Low Productivity in Zambia: Is it Time to Do Away with Blanket Recommendations?

Although there have been calls to ramp up efforts to design and implement a fertiliser programme that recognises the spatial variability of soil fertility and climatic conditions in the country, Zambia like most countries in Africa, continues to rely heavily on outdated general fertiliser recommendations, which are uniform across geographic locations and crops. This could be one of the main reasons why Zambia continues to record low crop productivity despite government fertilizer subsidy programmes. Using soil analysis and household data collected in rural Zambia, this study presents a comparative analysis of location-specific fertilizer application versus blanket recommendation to demonstrate why it is important for the Zambian government to invest in area-specific fertiliser recommendations in order to raise crop productivity. As expected, the results show that soil fertility varies across the country. This was observed in all the mapped soil properties with ranges of 2.7 to 7.8 for soil pH, 0.08% to 10.1% for soil organic carbon and 1.0 ppm to 333.6ppm for soil Phosphorus. These values belong to different classes in terms of acidities and levels of adequacy and deficiency. These results indicate that blanket fertiliser recommendations, or even liming, may not be well suited across the entire country. Instead, they support the need for Zambia to promote area-specific fertiliser recommendations. It is recommended that soil testing be promoted as part of extension messages, and that the government’s Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) should consider including soil testing as a requirement for the subsidy

A Long History of Low Productivity in Zambia: Is it Time to Do Away with Blanket Recommendations?

Although there have been calls to ramp up efforts to design and implement a fertiliser programme that recognises the spatial variability of soil fertility and climatic conditions in the country, Zambia like most countries in Africa, continues to rely heavily on outdated general fertiliser recommendations, which are uniform across geographic locations and crops. This could be one of the main reasons why Zambia continues to record low crop productivity despite government fertilizer subsidy programmes. Using soil analysis and household data collected in rural Zambia, this study presents a comparative analysis of location-specific fertilizer application versus blanket recommendation to demonstrate why it is important for the Zambian government to invest in area-specific fertiliser recommendations in order to raise crop productivity. As expected, the results show that soil fertility varies across the country. This was observed in all the mapped soil properties with ranges of 2.7 to 7.8 for soil pH, 0.08% to 10.1% for soil organic carbon and 1.0 ppm to 333.6ppm for soil Phosphorus. These values belong to different classes in terms of acidities and levels of adequacy and deficiency. These results indicate that blanket fertiliser recommendations, or even liming, may not be well suited across the entire country. Instead, they support the need for Zambia to promote area-specific fertiliser recommendations. It is recommended that soil testing be promoted as part of extension messages, and that the government’s Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) should consider including soil testing as a requirement for the subsidy

Soil: the great connector of our lives now and beyond COVID-19

Humanity depends on the existence of healthy soils, both for the production of food and for ensuring a healthy, biodiverse environment, among other functions. COVID-19 is threatening food availability in many places of the world due to the disruption of food chains, lack of workforce, closed borders and national lockdowns. As a consequence, more emphasis is being placed on local food production, which may lead to more intensive cultivation of vulnerable areas and to soil degradation. In order to increase the resilience of populations facing this pandemic and future global crises, transitioning to a paradigm that relies more heavily on local food production on soils that are carefully tended and protected through sustainable management is necessary. To reach this goal, the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (ITPS) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recommends five active strategies: improved access to land, sound land use planning, sustainable soil management, enhanced research, and investments in education and extension

Mapping the Spatial Variability of Soil Acidity in Zambia

A common strategy for ameliorating soil acidity is the application of agricultural lime. However, this measure is hampered by the lack of high resolution soil maps that can enable lime application according to the spatial variability of soil pH in an area. Therefore, this study was carried out to map soil acidity in South Eastern Zambia. The objective of the study was to apply geostatistical procedures to mapping soil acidity in the country. Ordinary kriging was performed on a set of 119 soil samples collected from the 0–20 cm soil layer whose pH was determined by the electrometric method. The kriging model that was developed was found to be satisfactory with low prediction errors (root mean square error 0.36). Thus, the map produced could be used to draw up strategies for management of soil acidity in the area

The Effects of Household Wealth on Adoption of Agricultural Related Climate Change Adaptation Strategies in Zambia

Despite increased emphasis targeting climate change adaptation strategies towards the poorer sections of communities, few adoption studies assess the uptake of these practices by these groups in a systematic and comprehensive manner. In this study, we used a combination of participatory rapid approaches and quantitative principal component analysis to determine each household’s wealth status, and to assess the relationship between wealth and the adoption of various agricultural related climate change adaptation strategies. Evidence from a random sample of 1231 households across six districts of Zambia showed that the more well-endowed households than their poorly endowed counter parts, adopted most of the climate change adaptation strategies. The relatively well-endowed households had a high probability of 10.6%, 9.5%, 7.1%, and 5.5% to embrace crop rotation, minimum tillage, fertiliser trees and change crop varieties due to climate change, respectively, than their poorly endowed counter parts. Most, if not all of these strategies require some level of resource investment hence only those households who could afford such resources are most likely to adopt them. The influence of household resource endowment on the uptake of several climate change adaptation strategies call for the subsidising of the relatively poor endowed households to encourage adoption of these strategies among this category of farmers

Letter to the Editor: response to global soil science research collaboration in the 21st century: time to end helicopter research by Minasny et al

Budiman Minasny and colleagues (Minasny et al., 2020) are to be congratulated for their incisive article about helicopter research in soil science, as are the editors of Geoderma for their new policy such that papers reporting research with primary data collection should include authors from the countries concerned. On the basis of our shared experience, as collaborating investigators working on soil science research in sub-Saharan Africa, we recognize the importance of this issue and its wider implications for sustainability of both research collaboration and development partnerships. We are collaborators on the CEPHaS project, a project funded by the UK Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund, which addresses the development of capacity in soil physics, geophysics, hydrogeology and statistics to study conservation agriculture, a suite of interventions aimed at improving resilience of soils and crops under climate change. CEPHaS involves researchers from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and the United Kingdom – soil scientists, agronomists, agricultural economists, social scientists, geophysicists, hydrogeologists and statisticians. We have been collaborating on the project since October 2017, and many of us have been working together for longer than that. In this letter we share some aspects of our experience, practices and policies which we think go some way towards facilitating more equitable partnership in research. In summary, we think that the problem of helicopter research can be tackled only through the development of genuine partnerships, in which the global asymmetries of power and wealth between north and south are not allowed to distort the research agenda or to prevent equitable collaboration in which the interests, opportunities and contribution of all parties are respected. This requires a commitment to capacity strengthening and long-term engagement on the part of researchers, their institutions and the funders of research

Potential Use of Biochar in Pit Latrines as a Faecal Sludge Management Strategy to Reduce Water Resource Contaminations: A Review

Faecal sludge management (FSM) in most developing countries is still insufficient. Sanitation challenges within the sub-Saharan region have led to recurring epidemics of water- and sanitation-related diseases. The use of pit latrines has been recognised as an option for on-site sanitation purposes. However, there is also concern that pit latrine leachates may cause harm to human and ecological health. Integrated approaches for improved access to water and sanitation through proper faecal sludge management are needed to address these issues. Biochar a carbon-rich adsorbent produced from any organic biomass when integrated with soil can potentially reduce contamination. The incorporation of biochar in FSM studies has numerous benefits in the control of prospective contaminants (i.e., heavy metals and inorganic and organic pollutants). This review paper evaluated the potential use of biochar in FSM. It was shown from the reviewed articles that biochar is a viable option for faecal sludge management because of its ability to bind contaminants. Challenges and possible sustainable ways to incorporate biochar in pit latrine sludge management were also illustrated. Biochar use as a low-cost adsorbent in wastewater contaminant mitigation can improve the quality of water resources. Biochar-amended sludge can also be repurposed as a useful economical by-product