PILLS FOR GROUNDNUTS
By FRANK SYKES
IN the report of the last oil-seeds mission to West Africa there was a strong recommendation that superphosphate in pellet form should be distributed to African farmers for sowing with their groundnut crops. At the same time experiments were set on foot 'to find out the optimum form of superphosphate, and to make tests to find if there were practical difficulties beyond those already foreseen. As the result of work carried out by the Director of Agriculture of Nigeria and his staff, it can now be predicted with confidence that the application of sixty pounds of superphosphate per acre in pellet form will, over the greater part of the groundnut- exporting area of Northern Nigeria, lead to increase in production of from two hundred to four hundred pounds of kernels per acre. Furthermore, that, as a residual effect, in the second year and on the following crop of millet or guinea corn, an increase of about the same weight can be expected.
Demonstrations have already taken place on native farms, and, despite the fact that the phosphate pills did not arrive in time for the early sowings, when they might have shown more spectacular results, farmers were very favourably impressed and were willing to take up this new form of manuring, which packs the value of a donkey-load of goat-dung into a handful of pills. Proposals for the manufacture of superphosphate pellets and their distribution to farmers are now being considered in Nigeria. Provided the Nigerian railway is made capable of dealing with the increased load, there may be prospects of an extra 6o,000 tons of groundnuts from Nigeria in five or six years, and that is many times what we may expect from East Africa in the foreseeable future. However, the chief importance in the scheme does not lie in the extra margarine which we would welcome from its successful adoption ; it lies more in the potential improvement in the standard of life of peasant farmers throughout Africa as a result of bringing the benefits of artificial manuring within their reach.
" Placement " planting was first developed by the Americans and Australians about fifteen years ago. In some areas in this country the use of the combine drill, another method of placement planting, has made not only the cultivation of previously unproductive land possible, but on the Wiltshire downs, for instance, it has made yields of thirty-six hundredweights of barley a commonplace, where in the past farmers were well satisfied with half that yield per acre from their better land. By placing the manure close to where the seedling grows, the farmer enables the plant to make much better use of the plant-food contained in it. In addition, phosphates, and under certain conditions potash, quickly become fixed in the soil in forms which arc not readily available to the plant. If manure is sown in concentration, the proportion so fixed is the smaller because the area of the pill or granules exposed to the soil, and thus in danger of becoming fixed, is but a fraction compared with when it is broad- cast in powder form.
In the American and Canadian wheat-belt and in the drier areas of Australia moisture is usually the chief factor limiting production, and, although combine drills are almost universally used these days, the potential increase in production in those parts cannot compare with that of the higher-rainfall areas, where either lack of phosphates, potash or nitrogen, or of all three to a varying extent, put a limit to production. The danger of famine lies most heavily over—apart from this country—those regions of the world where most of the farming is done by hand or with the aid of the most primitive ox-drawn implements. Some have looked to agricultural mechanisa- tion to ward off the threat of famine which must follow the rapid expansion of population. And this expansion is typical of every country where agriculture is backward.
Mechanisation has great prospects in some parts of Africa which are now empty, but most of the world's surface where climate and soil are suitable is farmed already. Over the much bigger area the only hope lies in increasing production. Even if mechanisation can increase production on land already cultivated, and it can only do so to a moderate extent, the capital necessary for such progress, and the time needed to change systems of land -tenure and to learn new skills, make it look as if the race will be lost. Others put their faith in improved methods of agriculture, in composting, in the introduction of higher-yielding crops and in controlling pests. Pro- gress on these lines can play its part, but the fact remains that it has played it in the past and that despite all our efforts population is increasing faster than food-production.
Composting is a valuable method of maintaining fertility under primitive conditions, but the compost heap cannot add anything that was not there before. Soils short of phosphates can be improved by the compost heap only at the expense of neighbouring areas whence extra material for composting can be gathered. Under our mediaeval open-field system the sheep was the main fertilising agent. By robbing the Peter of the rough grazings by day it paid the Paul of the arable field by leaving its droppings in the fold at night. In its own way the pill of artificial manure dropped in beside the seed may set on foot a big expansion in agricultural production in areas long under cultivation by peasants in many different parts of the world. But the beauty of it is that it does not need to disturb the existing social system, the system of land-tenure or even agricultural methods. Pills of manure can buy time for other lines of progress and even make them economically possible.
To revert to Northern Nigeria. It can be calculated how many tons of phosphorus have been exported to this country in the ground- nut cake which is a valuable high-protein foodstuff consumed by nearly all our own food-producing farm animals. This great trans- ference of fertility which took place between the wars was responsible to some extent for our success in increasing corn-production from our permanent pastures during the last war. Hence it is not surpris- ing that lack of phosphates is the limiting factor to plant growth over the greater part of Northern Nigeria, where the average crop in the poorer areas is now no more than 200 lb. per acre. If we, belatedly, repay the fertility we have received over the past thirty years, those hungry soils will receive no more than their due.
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