Lost Crops of Africa: Volume I: Grains

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Lost Crops of Africa: Volume I, Grains

Cropping Systems

Subsistence pearl millets are essential components of traditional agricultural systems. They are usually intercropped with cereals such as sorghum and maize or with legumes such as cowpea or peanut. To most farmers, the combined production is more important than the yield from either crop by itself. This mixed cropping is difficult for today's researchers to deal with, but there are some interesting developments. One is dwarfing.

To reduce the size of a cereal plant is a common strategy (see next chapter). It provides a compact plant that is more resilient, easier to handle, and higher yielding. In the case of subsistence pearl millets, however, dwarfing is done not for such a yield advantage. Researchers have found that simply reducing the plant height can contribute greatly to the associated cowpea and other low-growing legumes.¹² The millet no longer shades its shorter companion, which, with the increased photosynthesis, results in better yields. Initial results in Niger are quite encouraging. Farmers there have adopted dwarf millets eagerly.

Building Tilth

The soil under subsistence pearl millet is usually coarse textured, containing at least 65 percent sand. Such porous sites are not only poor in fertility, they are very poor at holding water. Any rain that does fall tends to drain away below the reach of the roots. Ways to keep it in the root zone would bring marked benefits, both in the crop's yield and its reliability.

It has been found, for example, that leaving crop residues in the field dramatically raises pearl millet yields in West Africa's deteriorating semiarid areas. In three recent trials, grain yields rose by 300, 450, and 550 percent, respectively. The residues not only increased the sandy soil's moisture-holding capacity, they also lowered soil temperatures and boosted fertility.¹³

Biological Fertilization

The areas where subsistence pearl millet is prevalent are usually so remote and so poverty stricken that despite the soil's barrenness commercial fertilizer can seldom, if ever, be used. But all plants, even those as robust as subsistence pearl millets, need food in the form of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and a few so-called "micronutrients." How to provide plant foods under subsistence conditions is one of the

¹²	Reddy et al., 1990.
¹³	INTSORMIL Bulletin, 1990.

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