FACT SHEET
West Africa Fertilizer Program Contact: Kofi Debrah Chief of Party Labone Accra, Ghana Email: kdebrah@ifdc.org Tel: +233 302 780 830
USAID West Africa Fertilizer Program Development and Scaling out of Integrated Soil Fertility (ISFM) Management Technologies Sustainable soil fertility management requires the judicious combination of organic and mineral fertilizers to promote plant growth. Management of very mobile nutrients such as nitrogen (N) is crucial to optimal crop productivity and sustainable agriculture. ISFM ISFM strategies center on the combined use of mineral fertilizers and locally available organic amendments (crop residues, compost and green manure) to replenish lost soil nutrients. This improves both soil quality and the efficiency of fertilizers and other agricultural inputs (seeds, crop protection products and water). In addition, ISFM promotes improved crop management practices, measures to control erosion and leaching and techniques to improve soil organic matter maintenance. Urea Deep Placement (UDP) Urea Deep Placement (UDP) of urea briquettes improves N use efficiency, increases crop yield and reduces environmental hazards associated with field Nitrogen losses by facilitating synchronization of N release and crop N uptake through a slow release process. Urea briquettes are produced by compacting ordinary prilled urea (containing 46% N) with a briquetting machine to yield 1-3 g granules of urea. Using UDP reduces the amount of fertilizer used, increases rice yields by as much as 25 percent, increases nutrient use efficiency and decreases environmental pollution. Prospective Work within the USAID West Africa Fertilizer Program Senegal, Mali, Liberia § Training of service providers in participatory learning and action research field school trainings around UDP plots.
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Learning plots on ISFM and implementation of demonstrations of UDP on various crops.
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Production of knowledge support deliverables (video, TAN, posters).
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Scaling out of ISFM/UDP though farmer to farmer approach and field school learning.
Prilled Urea
Transplanted rice in green (20 cm x 20 cm) and the geometric placement point of granules in black
Briquette Machine After rice line transplanting, rice farmers in Burkina Faso are hand placing urea granules
Urea briquettes
In all USAID West Africa Fertilizer Program interventions, there is a commitment to gender equity and to mitigating adverse environmental effects. ###