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How to check that fertilizer is genuine: a buyer’s guide for Kenya
Counterfeit and substandard fertilizer has been a documented problem in the Kenyan market. Bags have reached farmers containing sand and inert filler, regulators have confirmed substandard product in circulation, and consignments have been impounded. Most fertilizer...
A thousand flowers, a handful of mangoes: fixing fruit set in Ghana
Stand under a mango tree in the Ghanaian transition zone at flowering and it is covered in panicles carrying hundreds of flowers each. A mature tree flowers by the thousand and might carry a few hundred fruit to harvest. That conversion rate decides a grower's income,...
The soil is running a deficit: maize, rice and soybean in northern Ghana
Every harvest takes nutrients off the farm. Grain leaves in a truck, residues get burned or grazed, and almost nothing goes back. Nutrient balance studies for Ghanaian crops show a deficit for nearly all of them. Do that for twenty years around Tamale and the result...
One Formula for Every Farm: Why Blanket Cocoa Fertilizer Misses Most of Ghana
Here is a finding that should be better known than it is. When researchers mapped the nutrient requirements of Ghana's cocoa soils against the blanket fertilizer formula recommended nationally, the formula matched only about six percent of the land actually growing...
Pineapple for Europe: Feeding Ghana’s Year-Round Supply Advantage
Ghana sells pineapple into Europe on a promise most origins cannot make: fruit every week of the year. Mangoes and pineapples together carry roughly two thirds of the country's horticultural export value, and buyers in the EU and UK pay for continuity as much as for...
Why Your Phosphorus Is Not Working: Acidic Soils in the Kenyan Highlands
A farmer in Embu applies the same phosphorus he applied last year, and the year before. The maize still stunts. He assumes he needs more fertilizer. He almost certainly does not, because on strongly acidic ground most of the phosphorus he buys never reaches the crop...
Cashew Nutrition on the Makonde Plateau: Boron, Zinc and Kernel Outturn
Walk a cashew farm in Mtwara or Lindi at flowering and you will see thousands of flowers on a single tree. Come back at harvest and count the nuts. The gap between those two numbers is where most of Tanzania's cashew income disappears. Cashew is Tanzania's largest...
Dry Matter and Export Grade: The Nutrition Behind Kenyan Avocado Compliance
A Kenyan avocado consignment can fail before it leaves the country, and the reason is often a single number on an inspector's report. Dry matter content. Fruit that tests below the threshold for its variety does not clear for export, and a grower who harvests early...
Stone Fruit and Table Grapes in Jordan’s Highlands: A Season-Long Feeding Plan
Jordan's farming is not all in the warm Jordan Valley. Up on the highlands around Amman, Madaba, Al-Salt, and the northern governorates, the cooler climate and higher elevation suit a different set of crops: stone fruit like peach, apricot, plum, and almond, alongside...








