Some Doggol Rewbe Sylla Women’s Cooperative committee members.
Small compost piles beside perimeter fence: compost, or ‘brown gold’, can radically reduce input costs for vegetable farming whilst increasing harvesting times and yields dramatically.
It has taken only one year for these eucalyptus trees, which form a windbreak around the project, to grow from seedlings (above) to over 15 ft tall (below).
Some of the 329 cooperative members preparing seed beds.
Woman showing Okra, or Ladies Fingers, grown on her plot: vegetable growing seasons have been extended into the hot season, from April to September, which is when Okra grows best.
ADMAPE agronomist Djiby Ba (right) and manager, Mohamedou Sall, beside the small 2-cylinder water pump which, using careful water conservation techniques, will irrigate most of the 9-hectare site.
Sylla Women’s Organic Market Garden Project
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Located in the village of Sylla on the banks of the Senegal River in northern Senegal, this project was initiated by the 329 members of the Doggol Rewbe Sylla Women’s Cooperative.
The project came about in response to the difficulty women’s cooperatives are having in making vegetable farming pay. Vegetable farming is one of the few activities that can generate an income specific to women. But fertilisers, seeds, water extraction methods and crop protection products all cost more than can be made.
Organic farming systems, aligned with water-conservation techniques and better marketing and management skills, can change this though.
The aim of this project is to not only assist the Sylla community but, through experimentation and demonstration, to also benefit the many other women’s cooperatives in the region.
A system of a small diesel pump drawing water from the Senegal River was proposed. Subsequently, amongst other smaller infrastructure developments, a tall camel- and goat-proof wire mesh fence was erected around the 9 hectares, the land was graded by tractor and the main water channels were dug; water basins were built and piping bought; approximately 3000 wind-break and forestry trees were grown from seed and planted out, eleven sheep were bought and 315 compost piles were created.
The success of this project has depended mostly on its management and the development of management skills and systems that are appropriate to the Sylla Women’s Cooperative. Accordingly, a large part of the set-up phase involved meeting with the cooperative members to decide on a workable management structure.
The official start of the four-year project was April 2006. Exploitation of the 9-hectare site has been divided into two phases, the first phase covering approximately 5 hectares. 3.55 hectares of this land has been divided into 312 private ‘parcels’ of 114 sq.metres each, allowing one for each cooperative member. One hectare is being developed as the cooperative communal lands (all the profits of which go into the cooperative treasury) and consists of intercropped fruit trees and drip-irrigated. The forestry and windbreak trees cover a quarter of a hectare, and 1.35 hectares was planted with rainfed maize, millet and beans. The second phase will see all 9 hectares being exploited.
Throughout the project, training sessions are taking place covering composting techniques, pump maintenance, management and administration and various agronomic techniques.
Already, cooperative members report distinct advantages of an organic system. These include produce that conserves better (and so can be brought to market at unseasonable times), produce that is more marketable because it looks and tastes better, better water retention in soils (meaning cropping seasons can be extended into, again, more marketable periods), a reported general sense that organic crops are healthier and an enormous reduction in input costs from fertilisers to pest-control products to water-pump fuel.
From the start this project has met with enormous enthusiasm in Sylla and well beyond, and it’s implementation is being conducted with great commitment, especially by Djiby Ba, the project manager/agronomist, and Ramata Malal Sow, president of the Doggol Rewbe Women’s Cooperative.