Raphael Banda | June 11, 2023
It’s a cool morning around 10 o’clock, with a clear blue sky. The wind is blowing gently and Josephine Tembo is busy inspecting her maize crops that are intercropped with a tree called Gliricidia sepium. The 53-year-old farmer looks at the maize cobs full of smiles because she is sure she’ll have a bumper harvest.
Mrs. Tembo plucks a dry maize cob from a nearby stalk and whistles a joyful tune. She continues checking moisture on the cobs to determine the right time to start harvesting.
She says: “I learned about the benefits of intercropping maize with gliricidia in 2016 on Radio Breeze in Chipata, here in Zambia. I tried it the same farming season and the harvest was very good.”
Mrs. Tembo is a small-scale farmer who lives in Kakumbi village in Mambwe district, about 120 kilometres from Chipata city in the eastern province in Zambia. She says that gliricidia has immensely improved the soil fertility in her farm.
She explains: “When we harvest gliricidia leaves and bury them into the soil, they decompose and nitrogen is realized for the healthy growth of the crops. Its leaves provide natural fertilizers and farmers who plant Gliricidia sepium start benefiting after two years.”
She adds, “I plant Gliricidia sepium trees one metre apart between the plants and five metres between the lines.” She alternates lines of Gliricidia sepium with lines of maize, leaving three to five metres between lines of gliricidia and lines of maize.
Before she started intercropping maize with Gliricidia sepium, Mrs. Tembo struggled to buy the four to eight bags of chemical fertilizers needed for her two-hectare-field because it was very expensive. But now, she says, “The burden of relying on expensive chemical fertilizers has gone because I am using gliricidia as a natural solution for replenishing soil fertility.”
The bumper crop has also meant that Mrs. Tembo’s husband is no longer poaching wild animals to supplement their income.
Gloria Phiri is a 32-year-old farmer from Mambwe district who is also intercropping maize with gliricidia. She says that, apart from improving soil fertility, Gliricidia sepium is a good source of fuelwood.
Like Mrs. Tembo, Mrs. Phiri learned about gliricidia through the radio. She says, “Gliricidia is a magic and a game changer tree because of its massive benefits such as firewood.” It also grows quickly, taking just three years to reach maturity, unlike other trees, which can take 25-30 years.
Mrs. Phiri says she is also using gliricidia for other reasons. She explains: “I no longer use chemicals to kill weevils in the storage facilities but I use gliricidia leaves that are not harmful to the environment. I also use the leaves to control armyworms in my field.”
George Sichinga is the communications manager at Community Market for Conservation, or COMACO. He says that, for 30 years, his organization has been supporting farmers to plant gliricidia on their farms.
Mr. Sichinga explains: “Gliricidia trees help to replenish depleted nutrients in the soils. Farming with the tree combined with use of minimum tillage allows higher levels of carbon to be stored in the soils, which greatly improves soil fertility.”
While gliricidia trees are a cheaper method to fertilize crops than chemical fertilizers, Mr. Sichinga says that research conducted by COMACO indicates that fields grown with gliricidia yield slightly smaller harvests than those grown with chemical fertilizers. The difference is about 10% less—but this small loss in yield and income is more than offset by the money farmers save by not purchasing fertilizer.
He says: “Farmers have seen the benefits of agroforestry with gliricidia trees. The demand for this tree has increased. So far, more than 100 million gliricidia tress have been planted in Zambia by farmers.”
Gliricidia has brought fortunes to Mrs. Tembo. With back to back bumper harvests each year, she is able to support her family.
She says: “After harvesting maize last farming season, we sent our child to Jumbe Secondary School. We have enough food for consumption and we have managed to open a small shop in our village where people buy groceries. This couldn’t happen during the time we used to buy chemical fertilizers.”
