| Living Soils | 1
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| Cover |   |
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| Contents | 2-3
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| Living soils: foundation of better agricultural practices - Editorial | 4-5
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| ILEIA editorial team |
| Whether we realise it or not, soil affects each of us in our everyday lives. The food we eat, the farming systems, the foundations of our houses, the roads we walk on – all are affected by the state o... |  |
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| Soil quality and farm profitability: a win-win situation | 6-8
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| Mirjam Pulleman, Jon Hellin, Dagoberto Flores Valazquez, Walter Lopez Baez |
| Farmers are more likely to adopt and adapt improved soil management strategies if their efforts lead to an immediate economic benefit. An encouraging policy environment, as well as farmer organisation... | |
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| Talking soil science with farmers | 9-11
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| Pablo Tittonel, Michael Misiko, Isaac Ekise |
| When agricultural researchers visit farms in order to gather information for their research programmes, farmers rarely get proper feedback. Research information on scientific concepts such as soil fer... | |
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| Different interests, common concerns and shared benefits | 12-13
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| Didier Orange, Tran Duc Toan, Nguyen Duy Phuong, Nguyen Van Thiet, Paulo Salgado, Clement Floriane, Le Hoa Binh |
| Getting farmers to adopt new technologies to address soil erosion and fertility problems is not easy. In Vietnam, a multidisciplinary research project to improve soil management in traditional mountai... | |
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| Cover crops do it all | 14-15
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| Máximo Gerardo Ochoa Jácome, Pedro J. Oyarzun |
| Integrating cover crops and green manures helps farmers rehabilitate degraded soils in highland areas. In Ecuador, farmers experimented with this conservation practice. They found that it improved the... | |
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| Green manures: nature's gift to improve soil fertility | 16-17
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| Arulanandam Vakeesan, Tharshani Nishanthan, Gunasingham Mikunthan |
| Excessive use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides has affected soil and water quality in the Jaffna peninsula, Sri Lanka. Students from the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Jaffna have ... | |
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| How effective are Effective Micro-organisms? | 18-19
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| L.Narayana Reddy, Ken Giller |
| To help understand different viewpoints on the effectiveness of EM, we asked two professionals for their opinion. Dr. Narayana Reddy is a prize-winning organic farmer (who made the transition from con... | |
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| Feeding and watering the soil to increase food production | 20-21
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| Erna Kruger, Jody Sturdy, Marna de Lange |
| Learning groups, composed of community members, university researchers, NGOs and government extension workers, have proved effective at increasing food production and incomes in a rural community in S... | |
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| Optimising nutrient cycles with trees in pasture fields | 22-23
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| Karl North |
| The main weakness in sustainable grassland farming in humid ecosystems is the leaching of soil nutrients below the root zone of most forage species. Nature’s solution is a tree-dotted savanna – a syst... | |
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| Soil rehabilitation starts with more efficient cookstoves | 24
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| Frank Löwen |
| Many rural people in Tajikistan cannot afford to regularly buy products like fuel and agrochemical inputs. Instead, they rely on locally available yet increasingly scarce natural resources. One result... | |
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| Traditional night-soil composting continues to bring benefits | 25-27
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| Santaram S Oinam |
| Night-soil (human waste) has been considered a valuable agricultural resource since ancient times. When handled safely, its use can contribute to reducing soil degradation and water scarcity in the ar... | |
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| Changing attitudes to night-soil in Tanzania | 26-27
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| Patrick E M Mwalukisa |
| Farmers in Ileje district rarely used night-soil, believing it to be unsafe. One farmer’s efforts started a change in thinking and now night-soil is a valued commodity. As benefits have been realised,... | |
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| Termites and mulch work together to rehabilitate soils | 28
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| Elisee Ouedraogo, Abdoulaye Mando, Lijbert Brussaard |
| In semi arid areas such as the Sahelian zone of Africa, many soils have become severely degraded. One extreme form is the bare and crusted soil, which is virtually productively "dead". In Bu... | |
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| Rejuvenating soils with innovative farming approaches | 29
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| Wardjito |
| Farmers have been using chemical fertilizers and pesticides since the Green Revolution arrived in Paseh village in Central Java. Over time, however, they became aware that their soil was becoming hard... | |
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| The successful intensification of smallholder farming in Zimbabwe | 30-31
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| Ken Giller |
| Ten years ago, soyabeans were promoted with smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe to help offset problems of soil fertility, introduce diversity into cropping systems dominated by maize production, and incr... | |
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| Field notes | 32
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| Malamba Clement Mwangosi |
| Smallholder maize farmers in Ileje, Tanzania, became the focus of attention of an international soil fertility improvement project. The project recommended a new way of cultivation that included movin... | |
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| Sources | 33
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| Networking | 34
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| New books | 35
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| Sustainable agriculture in the news: International study stresses role of farmers | 36
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| Janice Jiggins |
| The recent global food crisis shows that agro-technology and markets alone cannot reduce hunger. A ground-breaking three-year study recently concluded that the agriculture sector should use the know-h... | |
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