Likoti Pit-Planting Conservation Agriculture — Growing Nations, Lesotho

Lesotho's mountainous terrain and decades of ox-drawn ploughing drove severe soil erosion and a steep decline in maize productivity, from roughly 1,400 kg/ha in the mid-1970s to about 450-500 kg/ha by the 2010s.

In 2002 the NGO Growing Nations introduced likoti, a conservation-agriculture pit-planting technique, to reverse this decline without relying on full-field tillage.

Farmers dig planting pits roughly 15x30 cm in a 75x75 cm grid, add fertiliser and seed, and retain crop residues as mulch, combining the method with crop rotation or intercropping.

A monitored FAO-reported comparison of 229 farmers (117 practising likoti, 112 farming conventionally) found likoti adopters in Qacha's Nek profitable in a season when conventional ploughers made a loss, and in Butha-Buthe likoti adopters' average profit was roughly double that of draught-animal ploughing farmers and nearly four times that of tractor-ploughing farmers.

Uptake has since extended with support from the German Red Cross, FAO and the World Food Programme, but adoption remains at the scale of thousands of farmers rather than a majority of Lesotho's smallholders, and academic surveys find uneven uptake gradients around Maseru.