Structural Practices for Conserving Soil and Water

New contour ditch on Honduran hillside with a soil retaining grass barrier planted on the uphill side.

• Contour Ditches (including diversion ditches)

These are ditches that are dug on sloped hillside farms to hold water and prevent sheet erosion. A new innovation in this practice is the zanja productiva which is a larger contour ditch partially filled with organic material and planted with moisture tolerant species.

• Water Catchments

These water deposits are at minimum a cubic meter in dimension and are dug in conjunction with the contour ditches to hold excess quantities in reserve for times of drought.

• Vegetative Soil-Conserving Barriers and/or Rock Barriers

These barriers are planted or constructed with rocks on the contour in conjunction with contour ditches so as to slow down the flow of water on hillside farms and to keep the ditches from filling up with topsoil.

• Terraces (individual or bench)

These are constructed on slopes too steep for crop cultivation where trees providing fruit, fuel, or fodder are to be grown.

• Minimum Tillage

This is a practice in which only the planting furrow is cultivated, thereby leaving the remaining soil structure intact so as to prevent erosion.

• Gully Erosion Protection

This includes a variety of very effective practices that serve to slow the flow of water in gullies and catch and hold soil runoff.

Practices of Planting Crops that Serve to Increase Moisture Holding Capacity,
Prevent Erosion and Increase Soil Fertility

• Intercropping

The planting of more than one crop species simultaneously on a piece of ground. Encouraging this practice gives support for a traditional Mesoamerican farming system that has shown itself to a) increase yields by increasing plant density; b) provide natural pest control by discouraging pests and encouraging predators; c) discourage weeds through shading; d) allow pairing of grasses with legumes for soil enrichment; e) provide crop insurance when one crop yields poorly; f) stagger the expenditure of labor over a longer period of time; and g) serve to extend the growing season.

• Mulching

The practice of leaving crop residues on the field following harvest and/or applying additional plant material to the soil surface. This practice serves to conserve moisture, retard weed growth, and improve soil structure and fertility.

Organic cucumber field on a contour protected hillside.

• Leguminous Cover Cropping

This is a crop grown primarily to prevent or reduce erosion and improve soil fertility. Leguminous cover crops also serve to improve soil structure and build up organic matter content of the soil. They prevent erosion by binding soil and by reducing the impact of raindrops striking the soil.

• Agroforestry

Agroforestry is a holistic approach to land use, based on the combination of trees and shrubs with crops, pastures or animals on the same land unit, either in sequence or at the same time (Lundgren, 1982). It is an age-old land use practice familiar to millions of peasant farmers and herders in many parts of the world. Industrial agriculture with its bias towards mechanization and monoculture has ignored its benefits.

• Tree Cropping

The planting of trees (i.e. coffee trees with leguminous shade trees) on hillside farms for the production of food or fuel.

• Reforestation

Planting once forested hillsides with commercially valuable species that will also protect the soil, watershed, and fauna.

Fertility Improving Measures

• Green Manures

A crop is planted with the primary purpose of incorporating that crop into the soil for soil improvement. Green manure crops may be legumes or nonlegumes. Most frequently green manure crops are selected for their nitrogen fixing qualities (legumes) and/or their quality as animal fodder. In most cases the green manure crop in not incorporated into the soil by mechanical tillage, but rather is left on the soil surface as mulch. Green manure crops provide inexpensive, "on farm" sources of nitrogen and organic matter, these increase the soil's absorptive and biochemical processes.

• Organic Fertilizers

Fertilizers composed of plant and animal remains from living organisms. Emphasis is in given to on-farm integrated systems that reduce the need for purchasing expensive chemical fertilizers and thus lead to reduced production costs, key to maintaining the small landholder's competitive advantage.

• Composting

Composting is an extension of the transformative process that is going on continuously in nature. For farmers this is a process of adding labor to animal and plant residues and converting these into a valuable on-farm fertilizer for the enrichment of soil and the growing for the next generation of crops.

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