VOA慢速英語:Project in DRC Aims to Increase Fertilizer Use

[ti:Project in DRC Aims to Increase Fertilizer Use] [ar:Jim Tedder] [al:Agriculture Report]] [00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English Agriculture report. [00:05.22]North Kivu is a war-torn province [00:09.42]that used to be called the breadbasket of the Congo. [00:13.63]Now, some farmers are being trained [00:17.43]to increase the productivity of their land with fertilizer. [00:22.32]The International Fertility Development Center [00:26.73]is supporting the project. [00:28.73]The IFDC is a nonprofit group based in the United States. [00:35.84]The project includes planting trees. [00:39.52]Trees help prevent the loss of soil through erosion. [00:44.74]They also provide charcoal for fuel. [00:48.83]And they provide fertilizer in the form of leaves. [00:53.52]These get plowed into the soil. [00:57.17]Other farmers are experimenting with chemical fertilizer. [01:03.01]The farmers use a mixture of chemical and organic fertilizer. [01:09.17]They also use improved seed. [01:12.16]They say they have succeeded in growing three [01:16.55]or four times as much maize, rice, beans and potatoes. [01:23.70]The fertilizer costs around a dollar and thirty cents a kilo. [01:28.99]But workers from the IFDC say if it triples a yield of potatoes, [01:36.33]for example, it means twice the profit. [01:40.08]Farmer Adrien Kangele says the new methods [01:46.82]promoted by the group could be a solution [01:49.10]to ethnic conflicts in the Kivu region. [01:52.75]Fertilizer brings peace, he says, because more people [01:58.85]can earn a living from the soil in this densely populated area. [02:04.68]One of the trainers, Sandra Kavira Kawisse, [02:10.43]says fertilizer can even save marriages. [02:14.10]She says in one area, many of the men had left their wives [02:19.72]and gone to work in the mines. [02:22.06]Then their wives started using fertilizer [02:27.11]and their yields of rice tripled. [02:30.62]The IFDC has found that when the men work with the women, [02:36.81]the harvests are nine tons a hectare compared [02:41.62]with six tons when the women work alone. [02:45.16]Dutch scientist Henk Breman designed the fertilizer project. [02:51.81]He says the Democratic Republic of Congo [02:56.05]uses less chemical fertilizer per hectare than any other country. [03:02.99]Mr. Breman suggests two reasons. [03:05.99]One is a lack of government policy. [03:09.99]The other is the influence of donors [03:13.60]and international nongovernmental organizations [03:17.98]that were against more intensive ways of farming. [03:22.72]HENK BREMAN: "There has been a period of about twenty years [03:26.15]where donor support was dominated by policies [03:30.81]that looked for other ways of developing agriculture [03:34.94]than the intensive way elsewhere. [03:37.65]I really accuse the donors and the international NGOs [03:42.40]for part of the famine in Africa." [03:44.40]Edwige Mungwana Kavor is a local agronomist [03:49.79]who works for Mercy Corps, an NGO. [03:53.85]She says she is not against adding chemical fertilizer to organic matter. [04:01.45]But she says land can become dependent on chemical fertilizers [04:07.96]and no longer produce without them. [04:11.36]Also, the chemicals can pollute groundwater. [04:15.86]Henk Breman agrees farmers should mix it with organic fertilizer. [04:23.40]But he says there is a much bigger risk [04:26.94]from soil erosion in the Kivu region. [04:30.55]HENK BREMAN: "The soil nutrient balance of this region [04:34.80]is the most negative in the world." [04:37.19]Farmers groups have welcomed a promise by the DRC government [04:42.75]to end taxes on fertilizers. [04:46.13]Those taxes are some of the highest in central Africa. [04:51.23]And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. [04:56.36]I'm Jim Tedder.

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