Browsing by Author "Breman, H."

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  • Integrated Soil Fertility Management: Opportunities for smallholders in West Africa
    Breman, H. (Amersfoort, The Netherlands: Centre for Information on Low External Input and Sustainable Agriculture (ILEIA), 2002)
    Low soil fertility is the main reason why West African farmers deplete their soils. Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) provides a way to reverse this. ISFM aims at progressive improvement of soil quality and nutrient, water and labour efficiency through the combined use of soil amendments and inorganic fertilizers.
  • Resource limitations in Sahelian agriculture
    Breman, H.; Groot, J. J.; van Keulen, H. (2001)
    In general, Africa has poor soils and unfavorable climates for agriculture. This is specially so in the Sahel of West Africa. Moreover, poor infrastructure means that fertilizer prices are higher in the Sahel than in Europe. Sahelian farmers have few incentives to maintain, let alone improve output. Nonetheless, the results of field experiments show that there are methods by which they could do this, in particular, by improving soil organic matter status, since this is often the principal way in which N, P and K are held in the soil. In the general absence of good policies to encourage fertility improvement, the Lomé workshop set goals for national fertilizer plans.
  • Using mucuna and P fertilizer to increase maize grain yield and N fertilizer use efficiency in the Coastal savanna of Togo
    Fofana, B.; Breman, H.; Carsky, R. J.; Van Reuler, H.; Tamelokpo, A.; Gnakpenou, K. (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004)
    To reduce severe soil degradation associated with agriculture, intensified land-use system is being promoted in West African countries. Most soils of the West African savanna zones are so poor that the efficiency of mineral fertilizers, if applied is very low. Many small-scale farmers are therefore reluctant to apply fertilizer also because of their high cost and unavailability. This work investigates a fertilizer management strategy using integrated soil fertility management with a leguminous cover crop (mucuna) so as to improve the soil fertility and increase the use efficiency of fertilizer. The experiment was conducted in the coastal savanna of Togo at Djaka Kopé. The aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of mucuna short fallow (MSF) in increasing maize grain yield through an improved use efficiency of mineral fertilizer. A 2-year maize-mucuna relay intercropping system was compared with continuous sole maize cropping. Fertilizer treatments were factorial combinations of 0, 50 and 100 kg nitrogen (N) ha^-1 and 0, 20 and 40 kg phosphorus (P) ha^-1. While maize grain yield was significantly increased by N fertilization, P did not show any important effect on grain yield. With no N and P applied, grain yield after MSF was on average 40 % (572 kg ha-1) higher than without. The response to N was much greater than the response to MSF, indicating that N was undoubtedly the key element for maize yield building. P fertilization and MSF together influenced positively the apparent N recovery fraction (NRF). N uptake alone did not reflect on its own the yield obtained, and the relationship between grain yield and N uptake is shifted by MSF with the grain yield increase per unit of N uptake being higher with than without MSF. Combining MSF and P fertilization may therefore lead to improved N use efficiency, making the application of fertilizer N (lower rates) more attractive to small-scale farmers.