Better Management Practices: Reduce Soil Erosion

Better Management Practices: Reduce Soil Erosion

Intercropping of cassava has great potential to decrease soil loss substantially.

For example, intercropping tree crops with cassava has the benefit of reducing runoff and soil loss. However, aggressive, fast-growing tree crops such as eucalyptus effectively utilise available nutrients and moisture at the expense of companion crops.

Plant along fast-growing trees
Chemical assays of plant parts indicate that cassava utilises more soil nutrients when planted alone, and considerably less when grown with fast-growing trees.

As a consequence other tree crops might be examined, particularly leguminous trees (such as leucaena) that hold the soil as well as fix nitrogen, provide fodder and fuelwood, and perhaps even attract game.

If cassava were intercropped with such tree crops, the fertility of the soil could be maintained without deterioration. Other studies have shown that runoff and soil loss were effectively reduced when cassava was grown on staggered soil mounds along with eucalyptus or leucaena, due to better canopy coverage of the soil surface.

Employing basic soil conservation techniques
Standard soil conservation techniques can also help. Contour ridges alone or in combination with live barriers and no-till farming have provided effective erosion control under experimental conditions in Latin America and Asia (Panfilo Tabora, personal communication). Mulching or other effective ground covers could also reduce erosion and conserve water in the soil.