Agricultural Development
Dylan Ferreira of Cal Poly University, assisted by Samuel Agyekum of Kasei, spent six months working with over fifty subsistence farmers. He worked under the supervision of Dr. David Headrick, Crop Science Professor, California Polytechnic University. Dylan and the village farmers established a series of test plots to judge the efficacy of different agricultural practices. He also mapped the 656 acres of King Farm, which BASIC procured, preparing to establish a nonprofit village farm. When it is completed it will support the hospital, school, and create thirty to forty jobs for Kasei villagers.
The organic matter management (manure trials), fertilizer placement, tillage and fertilizer application timing experiments were carried out on a one-acre experimental field planted in improved maize (corn). The experimental field was subdivided into plots for each trial. The trial plots were further subdivided into 10 ft by 10 ft blocks; each block received a treatment or served as a control. The plots were complete random designs (CRD) and each block was randomly assigned a treatment. At the end of the growing season, in August, each experimental block was harvested separately. The maize from each block was dried and weighed. Analysis of the data is currently underway.
Dylan Inspects Crops from Different Test Fields
