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Example of garden cultivation in dry places with water difficulties, great will and determination watch the video and understand better
caatinga still maintains 53% of vegetal cover, but 80% of its ecosystems have already suffered some type of alteration. These data reflect the way agriculture is done in the region.
Most small farmers in the hinterland work as their Luiz da Silva, owner of a five-hectare site in Sobral, northern Ceará. Every two years, in the dry season, he wipes out a piece of property, called a broach service. Once opened, the area is burned: "If we do not burn, we have a lot more work to clean," says Luiz da Silva, farmer
When the rain comes, your Luiz plants the crop. It does not use fertilizer, production depends on the natural fertility of the land. So after two years, he leaves the area and opens another piece of property. "We plant and in the first and second year gives good, but from the age of three the land weakens and gives no more plant than gave in the first two years," says the farmer.
In areas where the caatinga is sprouting, Luiz maintains a small breed of goats and sheep. The wood removed from the brocade is used in the constructions and to supply the wood stove. "The wood stove is faster and cheaper," comments Antônia da Silva, a farmer.
This cropping system has degraded the caatinga year after year. Agronomist João Ambrósio de Araújo Filho, a retired researcher at Embrapa, has worked with caatinga for more than 40 years. For him, fire is the biggest villain of the process of degradation.
"The burned area is totally devoid of any protection and when the rains start there is an acceleration of erosion. The fire also eliminates the banks of seeds of the species of the area and the microorganisms, that is to say, the soil is totally sterilized ", explains João Ambrósio de Araújo Filho, agronomist.
Ambrósio dedicated his life to find a way to produce in the semi-arid without harming both the environment, and adapted to the conditions of the region a system called agrosilvopastoril, which was implemented in the farm of Embrapa Goats and Sheep, Sobral.
The system is based on the traditional model of sertaneja estate, which combines agriculture, livestock and uses wood as energy. "Going for the use of environmentally friendly technologies, such as eliminating deforestation, burning. Another fundamental point was the fixing of agriculture in the field, "says João Ambrósio de Araújo Filho, an agronomist.
Embrapa's experimental module has eight hectares and works as follows: 20% of the area is for agriculture, 60% is for cattle raising and 20% for the Legal Reserve. "The idea of the agroforestry system is to keep the trees within the area in order to allow the circulation of nutrients in the system because the trees have deep roots and the crops have superficial roots. With the rains, nutrients deepen in the soil and escape from the root zone of these crops, so trees with deep roots are needed to bring these nutrients back into foliage, which when it falls degrades and releases back to the soil surface " , explains the agronomist.
The planting of the crops is done in strips interspersed by native tree lines and leguminous plants, which remove nitrogen from the air and transfer to the soil. In this system does not enter a gram of industrialized chemical fertilizer. All fertilization comes from the dung of animals and plants.
"They use species such as Leucena, a legume and also the Gliricide. As native legumes they are also preserved in these bands and used as green manure. They are cut and stand on the soil to make nitrogen available for the crop to be planted. With this system, our average productivity is 1,800 kilograms of corn grain per hectare, compared to the average of the state of Ceará, which is around 500, 550 kilos, we have a well-considered productivity balance, "says Francisco Éden , zootechnician - Embrapa.
Research has shown that 200 trees per hectare, or 20% shading, do not compromise the development and production of the crop. In the livestock module, the idea is to improve the quality of the native pasture, which is the caatinga. For the raising of goats, there is the so-called lowering of the trees: a drastic pruning, about 30 centimeters from the ground.
When the regrowth comes, if you choose the most vigorous bud to let it grow, the others are removed. In the following years, the tree continues to sprout, and it is these new branches that feed the animals.
"The relegation aims to put within the reach of the animal the regrowths and the foliage. In the area of reduced caatinga it is possible to place two and a half goats per hectare and in the normal caatinga are 2.5 hectares per head. It's the reverse, "explains Ambrose.
Another technique is the thinning of the caatinga, indicated for the rearing of ewes and cows, who prefer the low grass. "The idea is to remove trees