Mucuna cover cropping: Benin

In Benin, the soils of the southern plateaux have been under increasing pressure in recent years. As population density has increased, fallow periods have become too short to maintain soil productivity. The numerous smallholder farmers in the area have rarely used fertilizer and even when they have, the benefits have been reduced by a degraded soil resource base. One notable consequence of the reduced fallow periods has been the encroachment of Imperata cylindrica- an aggressive weed which requires substantial labour to eradicate by hand and which has forced farmers to abandon fields to fallow.