How we got started.

In 2020 I (Daniel) came across a podcast by John Kempf call the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. One of the episodes was with Norm Uphoff. Dr. Uphoff has been dedicated to the diffusion and research of Rice production. He had come across a method of production that is known as SRI. What he had to share peaked my interest.

I had grown up in the DRC in what is now called the Sankuru region and rice was grown as the staple crop. The method there followed a slash-and-burn cycle that involved deforestation, depletion of the soils, and then moving on to new land to repeat the process. The planting method was at random and depended on rain fall. While most SRI implementation was in flood irrigated fields I became curious if some of the key principles could be used in what is commonly called mountain or a rainfed systems. With some further research it became obvious that composting would be a strategic innovation to incorporate into some test trials.

I spoke with my uncle (Paul C. Law) who is currently running several projects in the Sankuru and he offered land and further encouraged me by covering airfare costs to get there from the US. My brother (Paul A. Law) had returned to the Sankuru and was working on Medical initiatives with the National Department of Health. He was also available to support some field trials. So we embarked on building hot compost, preparing some land , and conducting some field tests.

In the Spring of 2022 my brother began some hot compost piles. He also helped engage some local workers to prepare the land. Both Compost and Land were then ready for trials when I traveled out July of that same year.

That year we planted into the unburned land. We layed out a pattern of planting hills spaced 25cm apart in the row and spaced the rows 25cm apart creating a perfect grid. We punched holes in the ground and then filled them with compost. Each station then recieved 3-4 seeds. With in a week after planting the sprouts began to emerge and 10-14 days after they emerged we selected the most vigorous seedling to remain and uprooted the others, this is called roguing.

As you can imagine we had a lot of odd looks and questions because we had not burned. Then to confound peoples sensibilities we had planted only 4 1/2 cups of rice in our test plot when local methods would have consumed the majority of a 5 gallon bucket and then some. Then after our plants had emerged we got rid of 75% of what we had planted. What insanity was this!

At early stages the crop seemed thin and paltry but as the second month began people started to notice some differences. The crop color was richer and the blades of grass seemed a little broader. Once flowering began there was a notable difference and by the time the heavy seed filled panicles began to bend over, passers by took notice.

At harvest in late November early December we engadged a group of women. As most harvesting is done by women we were interested in their experience and feedback on our crop. They were impressed with the pannicle sizes. A pannicle is that tassle like seed head of rice. A concrete comparison is the number of seeds produced on each one. When I had initially come out in July of 2022 I had taken several dried pannicles from a previous harvest and counted the number of seeds on each. The highest number I came across was around 120 seeds. Our harvest seemed to be producing panicles with seed counts closer to 200. As our team of women made their way through the crop they were surprised by the number of hand bundles or sheaves they got for a given area.

The results were encouraging and we had more questions that needed to be answered. How much compost is really required for each planting hill? How does our method compare to local methods in terms of labor and more importantly, actual yields? We had more work to do in preparation for the next growing season and a structured research study to put together.

In January-February of 2023 we prepared more land to create a 45m x 45m plot and planted Red Ripper beans into the plot. These beans are found locally. This crop was intended primarily as a cover crop that would provide ground cover, maintain a living root in the soil and have the added benefit of fixing nitrogen for future crops. It was just a bonus that it provided another food crop, however our crop spacing and the yield seemed greater than the local method of growing beans. We hadn't collected exact Data but it warranted attention as well.

We had started with rice as our focus but building a broader regenerative cropping system that focused on rice was going to require answering a lot of questions. We needed a more structured research study for the 2023 growing season.