Likoti Pit-Planting Conservation Agriculture — Growing Nations, Lesotho

Lesotho's mountainous terrain and decades of ox-drawn ploughing have driven severe soil erosion and a steep decline in maize productivity, from an average of around 1,400 kg/ha in the mid-1970s to roughly 450-500 kg/ha across most districts by the 2010s. In 2002, the local NGO Growing Nations introduced likoti (Sesotho for 'holes'), a conservation-agriculture technique first piloted in Tebellong, Qacha's Nek district: farmers dig planting pits roughly 15x30 cm in a 75x75 cm grid, add fertiliser and seed, and retain crop residues as mulch, combined with crop rotation or intercropping, instead of tilling the whole field.

A monitored comparison of 229 farmers (117 practising likoti, 112 farming conventionally) across Lesotho's western lowlands and southeastern highlands, reported by the FAO, found that maize farmers using likoti in Qacha's Nek returned a profit in a season when conventional ploughers made a loss, and that in Butha-Buthe district, likoti adopters' average profit was roughly double that of farmers using draught-animal ploughing and nearly four times that of tractor-ploughing farmers, reflecting lower input costs as well as better yields.

Since the initial pilot, uptake has been extended with support from the German Red Cross, FAO and the World Food Programme, though adoption remains at the scale of thousands of farmers rather than a majority of Lesotho's smallholders, and results vary between the wetter lowlands and the harsher highlands. Academic surveys of adoption gradients around Maseru similarly find uneven uptake, underlining that likoti's benefits, while real, still depend on continued extension support to spread beyond early-adopting communities.

Read the full analysis: https://ojs.amhinternational.com/index.php/jsds/article/view/3819