Don’t burn or throw away that residue from your failed crop

IT has been an unusual cropping season. Most dry land crops have since succumbed to the harsh effects of the prevailing El Nino-induced drought at their various stages of growth.

And the blazing drought has inevitably extended its tentacles to livestock where it is wreaking havoc, especially in the country’s perennially dry regions where forage is always difficult to find.

So heart-broken are the bulk of farmers surviving on rain-fed agriculture that some may even consider gathering the dry crop residue and burn it. Some have gone to the extent of ploughing it into the ground to make sure the painful reminder of the failed season is not always there to madden them each time they cast their glances in the direction of their fields.

Of course, it has always been a bitter pill to swallow for the farmer to just accept that her crop has failed and move on to find ways of making the best out of the situation or at least salvage something positive.

In this case, the residue from the failed crop can at least be used for something productive in the not-too-distant future.

Today’s offering will try to explore some of the ways in which farmers can deal with the crop residue currently littering their fields after the rains abandoned the crops to die a premature death.

There is this group of farmers that will decide to set the residue on fire to clear their fields.

This option comes with some negative impact on the environment and on the soil as well. Burning crop residues increases the soil temperatures to undesirable levels in most cases and decimates soil micro-organisms to a depth of about 2, 5 centimetres.

Experts in soil science believe that besides damaging the environment, burning crop residues also impacts the monetary cost involved in recovering the soil fertility the season after the burning. It also increases the potential for further pollution through the increased use of fertilisers to help the soil recover its lost nutrient content.

Many farmers burn crop residue because they believe it helps control weeds and pests through direct destruction or by altering their natural habitat. I guess the debate on the efficacy or shortcomings of the method is a story for another day.

There is also this group of farmers that believes that burning residue brings soil nutrient gains in terms of potassium in the ash for the next crop cycle. This may be true in the short term but the consequences of loss of other important nutrients and organic carbon will eventually outweigh the short-term benefit.

It is also believed that crop residue burning helps improve plough preparations for the next crop for those farmers that use draft power.

The other option for dealing with crop residue, which is feel is the most appropriate for the times the country is going through is for the farmers to harvest and store it.

They will later use it as supplementary feeds when the little green matter that is currently available gets exhausted or dries up.

Farmers, however, need to appreciate the fact that not everything on their fields can be swept into windrows and fed as hay for livestock to eat.

They need to research the chemicals applied to crops before converting them to feed or forage. Farmers must also appreciate the fact that they could have used different chemicals either as pesticides, herbicides or fertilisers from their neighbours so what the next farmer does to ascertain the safety of crop residue may differ from what farmer B needs to do.