1. 2006-01-20 FMNR is a form of tree coppicing and hence depends on the presence of living tree stumps that resprout after cutting.
  2. 2006-07-20 Several technical considerations must be taken into account when attempting to help economically disenfranchised families and communities initiate and sustain production of soybeans or any new crop. Technical assistance cannot be done in isolation; one must provide more than just information...
  3. 2009-07-20 Many of you have graciously taken the time to fill out the seed harvest report form that accompanies each mailing of seeds from our seed bank. In reading reports from people in our network, we want to learn whether the seeds we are sending out have improved the lives of poor small-holder farmers....
  4. 2004-07-01 Training in tire gardening was done with women in Mauritania. After the training, each woman was given several small packets of seeds and encouraged to start a garden. When we arrived in Kiffa, the only vegetable gardens that could be found were in an ancient riverbed (known as a Wadi) northwest...
  5. 2005-07-20 Over the years ECHO has been asked to give advice concerning whether or not to use hybrid seed. We carry very few hybrid varieties in our seed bank because we expect people who receive seed to multiply it locally. Now some new information about this old question, specifically about maize, has...
  6. 2004-07-01 We read an article in Appropriate Technology (Volume 28, No. 3; July/September 2001) about farmers in Niger who used bottle caps to distribute tiny amounts of fertilizer. Despite drought conditions, farmers who used this technique harvested 50 to 100 percent more millet than those who did not.
  7. 2006-10-20 Development is a) a process of people learning to solve their own problems, b) sustainably. It means progressing from one problem to another. Agricultural development is possible in more ways and climates than people often think.
  8. 2007-04-20 In observation trials, each variety is grown in only one plot of ground. Observations from such trials are not as conclusive as with replication. As long as site conditions are fairly uniform, however, they give the experimenter a pretty good idea of likely “losers” and “winners.”
  9. 2003-10-20 For many of us the idea of “research” is scary. We are not trained in it. We picture rigorous statistical analyses that we do not have any idea about. We have seen glossy scientific journals with technical words that we could not understand. Besides, isn’t our goal to directly help small farmers?...
  10. 2003-10-20 This article covers the important steps in planning and carrying out an experiment and then apply these steps to a sample experiment.