Research

The Cambridge Research Projects (1986-2002)

Inga Foundation projects are based upon the findings of long-term studies run by Inga’s founder Mike Hands for Cambridge University into subsistence slash and burn farming.  Research was conducted in secondary rain-forest, on two acid-soil sites, in the humid tropical lowlands of Costa Rica and focused on the ecology of both intact rainforest and slash and burn systems on acid soils.

This research was particularly important because of the confusions and contradictions which dominated the scientific literature at the time, especially regarding the fluxes and fates of plant nutrients during and after burning.

 The overall objectives were, firstly, to determined the key ecological constraints causing slash-and-burn to fail, and secondly to establish the minimal ecological requirements of an alternative sustainable system.

Publications

Research Findings

In total, a series of four research and development projects in Costa Rica and, later, Honduras, yielded vital and powerful insights into  why slash-and-burn works in the short-term, why it fails so quickly and why and how the soil of slash-and-burn sites degrades. The findings are held to be applicable to a wide range of soil types across much of Amazonia.

From over the 6 years of trials one system capable of sustaining a harvest was discovered; the agroforestry technique known as alley cropping, but using the indigenous nitrogen-fixing trees of the genus Inga rather than conventional alley cropping species.

The studies demonstrated that phosphorus (P) is the key limiting nutrient in slash and burn systems. Inga alley cropping works sustainably because it retains and recycles the phosphorus that it inherits from the original burned forest ecosystem. And in addition to this, it also retrieves, retains and recycles the small supplementary quantities of rock-phosphate that are all that the subsistence farmer can afford to apply. This rock-phosphate replaces the phosphorus lost with each crop harvest.

It is important to stress that this system of Inga alley cropping is radically different to the original notion of alley cropping developed in West Africa that is now widely regarded as a failed hope of the 1980′s.

The Inga system provides soil-protection, weed-control and a nutrient regime that is far superior to those provided by the conventional alley cropping species (eg Leucaena spp; Gliricidia sp; Calliandra spp; etc.) used in the original system.

Biological Weed Control

Another key element of the alley cropping is that it is able to reduce weed growth to virtually zero. This is of vital importance for the farmers as it transforms the amount of labour required to achieve a successful harvest.

The difference between alley cropping with Inga spp. and alley cropping with almost all other species cited in the literature (the trials in Costa Rica included Gliricidia sepium and Erythrina fusca, together with 9 Inga spp.) is that the Inga produces tough, durable mulch, thus simulating the protected soil conditions of the rain-forest floor and preventing the re-growth of weeds.