Insect-eating bats can eat insects equivalent to their own body weight in one night. They are certainly worth conserving, as they provide farmers with a free resource worth millions of dollars, season after season. Californian farmers lead the way when it comes to farming with bats. They have long recognised…
Africanfarming.com has had a few calls for help from farmers desperate to stop elephants from cutting destructive swathes through their crop lands. What to do about “problem animals” is a question as old as farming itself. Farmers are the people of the African plains and forests and elephants are the…
The World Bank has lauded a conservation farming model for rural, small-scale farmers being implemented by the Community Markets for Conservation Farming (COMACO). Conservation farming is recommended as a practice for sustainable crop production that simultaneously preserves soil and water resources. Given the positive effect on the environment and economic…
After much trial and error, a businessman at Hermanus, in the Western Cape of South Africa, has developed a method of producing “tea” from earthworm castings on a scale large enough to be used in agriculture. Organic fertilisers and pesticides are not all that popular with farmers because they are inclined…
