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The WOCAT website collects innovations on sustainable land & water resource management. It is very resourceful.

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The Zambian Conservation Farming Unit (CFU) is highly specialised in addressing the problem of hard pans (as result of years of using disk ploughs).

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Conservation Farming (CF) involves adopting a number of husbandry practices that together comprise a complete farming system. CF is suited to all commonly grown annual crops, including maize, bulrush millet, sorghum, cotton, sunflower, groundnuts, soya beans, cowpeas, gram, pigeon pea and sesame. Although individual CF systems have been developed for either hand hoe or oxen farmers, the principles are fundamentally the same.

The basic technologies involved in CF are:

• • The retention of crop residues (as opposed to the widespread practice of burning).

  • Restricting tillage of the land to the precise area where the crop is to be sown i.e. only 10-15% of the surface area of the land is tilled to establish crops. Tilling only to a depth sufficient to break through plough or hoe pans.

  • The completion of land preparation (in Agro-ecological Regions I & II) in the dry season.

  • The establishment of a precise and permanent grid of planting basins, planting furrows or contoured ridges, within which successive crops are planted each year and within which purchased or organic nutrients are accurately applied.

  • Early and continuous weeding that inhibits seeding and in time reduces the soil weed bank.

  • Rotations or inter-cropping with nitrogen fixing legumes that occupy a maximum of 30% of the cultivated area.

The principal aim of CF is to restore and maintain the fertility of the land in the 15% surface area and associated rooting zone occupied by the planted crop. The intervening area (85% of inter-rows) can remain relatively infertile as this area is occupied by competitive weeds.

The specific steps that should be taken by farmers in order to cultivate their crops within a CF system are shown in the handbooks on the CFU site.