It’s no secret that many areas of Africa have seriously degraded soil due to overuse as well as erosion and desertification. And yet food production needs to increase by 70 percent by 2050 to feed the growing population in that area. A report this month published in The Guardian (link) describes a management technique called Integrated Soil Fertility Management which helps improve soil quality and water holding capacity by adding compost and other organic material, small amounts of fertilizer, and growing crops like cowpeas that help soils recover from overuse. Agra’s Soil Health Program has done over 130,000 demonstrations of this technique in 13 countries over the past five years. Other areas are prone to increasing salinity from irrigation but research has found that growing liquorice lowers the water table and pulls the salt away from the roots of the crops.
