Chinyika community in Gutu district, 229km south of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare is one of the driest and drought prone areas in the country. Local leader, Paul Muchineripi (PhD) is helping community members to heal and enrich their crop lands using cattle.
Paul (72) says the community has been utilising the soil in an extractive and exploitative manner for decades which has led to an overall reduction in yields.
“The soil has been used for decades without any restoration efforts as well as being damaged by the use of chemical fertilisers. Overtime this has led to reduction in soil productivity,” says Paul.
Paul says the diminishing yields baffled the community who could not explain why this was happening, however, after receiving training on holistic management, a programme that uses livestock to enrich soil fertility, the community is now aware of how to keep the soil healthy.
“When yields diminished they were wondering why but now they know what happens to the soil and what they need to do so that it remains productive. They needed to replenish what the soil has lost over many years,” says Paul.
By enclosing livestock in the crop fields at night for not more than seven days the community is now healing degraded land. The cattle use their hoofs to loosen hard capped soils and they drop their dung and urine which in turn improves soil fertility including water retention.
“They have brought their cattle together and they are using moving kraals. They put the cattle in a certain area over night for seven days before moving it to the next area. They have been doing this in their gardens before planting vegetables and they do this in every garden,” says Paul.
Paul says the community is already getting good results from their collective work which requires individual livestock owners to bring their livestock together into one community herd.