Muhammad Bachal Chhajro, a small-scale farmer, who belongs to village Jhalo Sharif in Dadu District, has a valid reason to start using farmyard manure to restore the lost nutrients and fertility of lands. “After watching the output of all crops decline for four decades, I finally realised that the small piece of my family land has lost its fertility,” Chhajro told The News.
Explaining about the method he used to counter the lack of nutrients in soil, Chhajro said he mixed farmyard manure in the flowing tube-well. “It is an easy process to mix the manure while the water is flowing from the tube well, as it spreads almost evenly and benefits the soil in retaining nutrients,” he said.
“This exercise started paying off within two years period. The yield and overall results proved that the soil has regained its fertility from organic matter applied to it," he said.
Village Jhalo Sharif, comprising around 150 households, is located in the catchment area of the River Indus, some 23 kilometres from Dadu city. The community people in this village traditionally depend on farming and livestock rearing. Each family owns a piece of land and a small number of livestock. The combined strength of the village’s total animals is 3,542.
The village-- popularly known after the shrine of Faqeer Najamuddin Chhajro-- has a government primary school, electricity, and a basic health unit (BHU).
After one year, the people said, the whole village has started following this practice to restore the fertility of their lands.
Though the village community members, having their own cattle heads collected farmyard manure daily at their homes, they never realised how helpful farmyard manure could be for boosting the fertility of their pieces of family lands.
This is a result of a change of heart that favoured the use of organic fertilisers over chemical inputs applied for increasing production of high-yielding variety seeds.
Earlier, those mounds of farmyard manure were of no use, but now the farmers mix it with the flowing water from the 14 tube-wells to irrigate their lands with nutrients to maintain fertility of the soil.
Almost all the farmers have nearly stopped using chemical inputs because of their horrible aftermaths.
According to scientists, of all the components of soil, organic matter is probably the most important and most misunderstood. “Organic matter serves as a reservoir of nutrients and water in the soil, aids in reducing compaction and surface crusting, and increases water infiltration into the soil. Yet it's often ignored and neglected,” a researcher said in a report.
Chhajro calls it a successful move. “After using organic matter we are getting proper yields without spending more money on chemical fertilisers,” he said, and added, it was the only way out to restore soil fertility.
The success can be gauged from the fact that during 2014, there could be seen heaps of farmyard manure everywhere in the village, but now they are nowhere to be seen and crop yields are growing.
Organic matter is a reservoir of nutrients that can be released to the soil. Each percent of organic matter in the soil releases 20 to 30 pounds of nitrogen, 4.5 to 6.6 pounds of P2O5, and 2 to 3 pounds of sulphur per year. The nutrient release occurs predominantly in the spring and summer, so summer crops benefit more from organic-matter mineralisation than winter crops.
Moreover, it behaves somewhat like a sponge, with the ability to absorb and hold up to 90 percent of its weight in water. A great advantage of the water-holding capacity of organic matter is that it will release most of the water that it absorbs to plants. In contrast, clay holds great quantities of water, but much of it is unavailable to plants.
It also causes soil to clump and form soil aggregates, which improves soil structure. With better soil structure, permeability (infiltration of water through the soil) improves, in turn improving the soil's ability to take up and hold water.
And last but not the least, it also prevents erosion. Though this property of organic matter is not widely known, data used in the universal soil loss equation indicate that increasing soil organic matter from 1 to 3 percent can reduce erosion 20 to 33 percent because of increased water infiltration and stable soil aggregate formation caused by organic matter.
According to farmers, previously they were applying 100 kilogram of DAP fertiliser on every acre of standing crop, but the introduction of organic fertiliser has reduced it to only 25 kilogramme.
“There are two benefits of farmyard manure. The lands gain fertility, while the other expenses on cultivation are minimised by at least 50 percent,” a farmer said
He added that they have also started preserving local variety of seeds to revive the old ways, innovated and fine-tuned by their forefathers and practiced since generations.
It is not only one village that has seen this change. Farmers in at least 25 villages in the district are now using organic matter, inspiring others to rehabilitate the lost fertility of the lands. They are also dunging their farmlands with manure through tube wells.
It must be noted that not all the farmers have access to fresh irrigation water sources for cultivation. They depend on tube-wells to extract water for agriculture.
Though there is no exact data, millions of tons of these chemicals (pesticides and fertilisers) are used annually in the name of averting crop diseases. This is widely depleting soil nutrients and poisoning water sources and environment in Sindh.
The frequent reports of deaths of animals in different areas are yet to be linked with the effects of pesticides used on cotton, wheat and other crop fields, which poison the plants that animals eat.
Dadu district-- situated along the right side of the River Indus- has been declared prone to disaster. If the river receives more water and heavy rains in monsoon it causes flooding. But in case of delayed monsoon rains and low water in the river, the people in some areas of Kachho and Kohistan may face droughts.
Several farmers, who faced flood for three consecutive years (in 2010, 2011 and 2012), have haunting experiences. They said they were unable to recover the losses occurred during the natural calamities.
The government officials sitting at different sections of various relevant departments are reluctant to share the information about mitigation measures they might have taken to save crops and other assets of farmers.
The farmers have realised that due to excessive use of chemical inputs they have lost the fertility of their lands and are witnessing environmental pollution around them.
Similarly, the cost of cultivation has also increased manifold, leaving them wondering as to how to get rid of these expenses and save the precious lands and environment.
The old practices of using farmyard manure and local seed varieties had almost become defunct decades back due to the mechanisation and government sponsored introduction of high-yielding variety seeds which needed heavier use of chemical inputs.
The writer is a staff member
