FORI Results DR Congo
FO-RI | Project results | DR Congo
Farmers and researchers in a co-active search for solutions
Farmers named the problems, helped design the protocols, ran the trials on their own plots and interpreted the results alongside the researchers. Four farmers' organisations in five territories of North Kivu spent four years testing how to restore soil fertility and how to fight the pests destroying their maize, rice and potato, and did it through armed conflict, displacement and a provincial economy under severe strain.
Photo: CSA
The idea
A co-active search for solutions
Four farmers' organisations, their members and researchers from two universities worked as one group rather than as suppliers and recipients of advice. Farmers named the problems and turned them into questions a trial could answer. Researchers brought protocol design and statistical analysis. Both sides read the results together at end-of-season review meetings, and those meetings set the next round of research questions.
Two problems went to the centre of the work, because farmers put them there: how to restore soil fertility, and how to fight the pests and diseases destroying their crops. Everything tested over four years answers to one or the other, on maize, rice and potato.
LOFEPACO, Ligue des Organisations des Femmes Paysannes du Congo, led the project. SYDIP, COOCENKI and FOPAC-NK co-implemented it. Research came from CERAVEG, the agronomic and veterinary research centre of the Université Catholique du Graben, and the Université de Goma. GERDAL provided methodological support and CSA is the agri-agency.
How it works
Six steps, then round again
The last step is the first step of the next cycle. Review meetings do not close a season, they open the following one.
Collect farmers' concerns
What farmers raise in their own words is turned into problems a trial can actually work on.
Agree the research themes
Farmers and researchers settle on which of those problems will be taken forward this season.
Draft and validate protocols
Protocols are written and then validated with the farmers who will run them, not handed down.
Run the trials
Experiments go in on farmers' own plots, in farmer field schools, with data collected in the field.
Statistical analysis
The researchers analyse the data, which is where significance is separated from impression.
Review together
Farmers and researchers interpret the results side by side, and the questions still standing become the next cycle.
What works | Soil fertility
Feeding the soil with what is on the farm
The headline finding is that combinations beat single inputs. Manure releases nutrients in the short term, compost over the longer term, and the two together outperform either alone.
Animal manure best yields in potato and maize
Goat manure on maize at Mandimba produced significantly higher yields than unfertilised plots. In SYDIP's potato trials at Lukanga and Luotu, manure and solid compost gave the highest yields of all treatments tested.
Compost from crop residues coffee parchment
Decomposed coffee parchment produced significantly higher paddy yields at Ighaviro than household waste or the control, which confirms the value of composting harvest debris rather than discarding it.
Liquid compost and biofertilisers foliar, not base
Easy to transport to distant fields, and they can be made in the field itself. They are effective for vegetative growth, and farmers found they work best as a foliar fertiliser rather than as a base fertiliser. LOFEPACO's complex liquid biofertilisers had a positive effect on rice yields at Bingo.
Combinations manure plus compost
Manure combined with compost gave the best potato yields in FOPAC's trials, the manure releasing nutrients in the short term and the compost over the longer term. Manure combined with mineral DAP gave the best maize yields at Tongo in COOCENKI's trials, higher than either input on its own.
What the yield trials measured the numbers
Potato, SYDIP, Lubero territory
Yields ranged from 12,381 to 19,048 kg/ha at Kasongwere, 4,952 to 13,088 kg/ha at Kamiriki, 3,238 to 5,143 kg/ha at Luotu and 2,857 to 5,143 kg/ha at Lukanga. Manure and solid compost plots performed best, although differences between treatments were mostly not statistically significant.
Rice, LOFEPACO, Kyatsaba
Goat manure gave the best emergence rate, 87%, against 80% for the control and 77.4% for the liquid biofertiliser, and significantly more tillers per plant, 5.13 against 4.33. Yields were highest with goat manure at 3.67 kg/m², but the difference was not significant: drought during the season suppressed the effect.
Maize, LOFEPACO, Mandimba
The best organic fertiliser treatments produced 3.33 and 4.00 kg/m² against 1.33 kg/m² for the unfertilised control.
What works | Pests and diseases
Plant extracts against fall armyworm
This is the project's clearest success, tested by COOCENKI across four sites and by LOFEPACO at a fifth. Effectiveness generally rose with the dose, and the best plant differed from site to site, which is itself a finding.
Site by site five sites
Lukanga
Nettle extract was the best insecticide at every dose tested, ahead of chilli, tobacco and Bidens pilosa. Nettle doubles as a good green fertiliser.
Kiwanja
Absinthe reduced armyworm incidence most, by 18.75%, while tansy had the greatest effect on grain yield. Tephrosia and chilli reduced incidence by 13.5% and 14%.
Kabasha
The highest maize production came from the maximum dose of chilli extract. Farmers learned that tephrosia and tithonia act as both biofertiliser and insecticide.
Tongo
Tobacco extract was the most effective at most doses, and farmers observed the complete disappearance of armyworm after three successive sprayings. Lantana camara was judged very effective and is freely available in the village, which makes it a low-cost option.
Mandimba, LOFEPACO
Chilli and tobacco-based biopesticides performed as well as, or slightly better than, the synthetic product Rocket, reducing attacks without any yield penalty.
The application protocol every 7 to 10 days
Prepare extracts fresh and filtered. Apply early morning or late afternoon, to avoid degradation by the sun. Repeat every 7 to 10 days during active infestation. Wear gloves.
Striga in rice weed three or four times
At Ighaviro, LOFEPACO found that increasing the number of weedings increased paddy yields. Plots weeded three and four times yielded significantly more than those weeded once or twice, and striga did not flower in the trial area. The parasite's virulence in the soil nonetheless persists, so this manages the problem rather than removing it.
Sowing dates and climate 1 March
The farmers' traditional sowing date of 1 March gave the significantly highest rice yield, and the further from it, the lower the yield. Short-cycle varieties would allow sowing two weeks earlier to catch the March and April rains.
Potato blight, a negative result synthetics won
SYDIP found the synthetic fungicides, Winner, Agrolaxyl and Ridomil, clearly more effective against blight than garlic or nettle extracts. The trial also disproved an assumption farmers held, that the chemical products they were buying were expired. The problem pointed instead to incorrect use.
Farmers nonetheless want to keep researching nettle, which they found partially effective and much cheaper, and to test the doses and spray frequencies needed in heavy rain.
Biopesticides can be lethal to many insect species and so contribute to biodiversity loss. What should be promoted is integrated pest management, not biopesticides on their own.
2025 in numbers
Results in numbers
Figures for 2025, from the annual narrative report. The cumulative project figures in the band at the top of this page come from the project leaflet.
Women were 58% of participants reached in 2025, and they are the majority in every category that matters operationally: 132 of the 202 pilot farmers running experiments, 162 of the 277 farmers at review meetings, and 139 of the 205 at practical training sessions.
"Before the training on fighting fall armyworm, I only produced 10 kg on my 7.5-are plot because of the caterpillar damage. Since I was trained on biopesticides, I harvest a full sack from that field, 100 kg. After selling it I made 60 dollars, of which 35 paid the children's school fees. The rest went to other family costs." Irène, farmer
What changes for farmers
Making the products yourself
The shift farmers describe is not simply better yields. It is no longer having to buy the thing that protects the crop. Once someone can make a biopesticide from plants they grow, the cost of protecting a field stops being a purchase decision.
"Fertilising our fields, weeding and planting techniques, the products to fight pests, we learned all of it through our training. Before, we had big problems with caterpillars. Now I've learned to produce the products that protect my crops myself, and I've increased my yields."
Espérance, farmer
Honest constraints
A promising trial result is not a solved problem
The project is candid about this. Most of what limits these practices is not whether they work, but whether a farmer can get hold of enough material to use them at field scale.
Getting the materials
- Not enough manure. Livestock keeping is small-scale, transport to distant fields is costly, and manure has become a traded commodity. Farmers are asking for support to livestock activities so they can produce their own.
- Not enough biomass to make compost at scale, because fields are over-exploited.
- Costly biopesticide ingredients. Tobacco, chilli and garlic are commercial crops. Farmers who cannot grow them cannot produce biopesticides in quantity.
- Extracts do not keep. Chilli extract must be used within 24 hours, and how long biopesticides stay active is still an open research question.
Using them in the field
- Safety. Farmers have limited knowledge of protective equipment when spraying, and it is not available locally.
- Reinfestation from neighbouring fields means treating one field is not enough. This one needs collective action.
- Land. Plots are small and often rented, which limits what tenants are willing or able to apply.
- Security and climate. The Mavivi-Matembo site had to be abandoned for security reasons and FOPAC could not complete some trials. Heavy rains and drought disrupted others.
Operating context
Working through a crisis
North Kivu is marked by intensifying armed conflict, mass displacement and a humanitarian crisis. Since late January 2025 the province has been under dual administration, AFC/M23 in the Petit Nord and much of Lubero territory, and the Congolese government in the Grand Nord. The closure of Goma airport and the breakdown of some banks have hit the provincial economy.
Despite this, the project's sites remained operational throughout the year. A relative calm in Nyiragongo and Rutshuru allowed people to return and resume farming, and all four organisations completed their planned activities.
No advocacy events could be organised in 2025, because of the security situation.
What comes next
The spiral
The final workshop chose the word deliberately. Each cycle builds on the last, knowledge accumulates, and the steps overlap rather than running in a straight line.
Local experimentation
A core group of farmers tests the practices in their own conditions, which is the stage the project has just completed.
Densification
Support wide adoption within those same villages, by tackling the obstacles that block it rather than by repeating the demonstration.
Scaling out
Reach new villages through farmer-to-farmer exchange, with the previous two turns still running.
- Technical sheets on making liquid composts and biopesticides.
- Radio programmes and village open days.
- Making seeds of fertiliser and biopesticide plants locally available.
- Training community relays.
- Advocating for agroecological practices to be recognised in the national technical catalogue.
A methodological guide for the organisations' agronomists on the participatory action-research approach, and a video documentary capitalising the project's results, were both in preparation at the end of 2025. Neither is available yet.
The four organisations, with CSA and GERDAL, have submitted a proposal built on the spiral approach to ENABEL's DeSIRA+ call, to continue the work and scale up the results.
Resources
Download the outputs
Acronyms 14 terms
- AgriCord Alliance of agri-agencies mandated by farmers' organisations
- FOPAC-NK Fédération des Organisations des Producteurs Agricoles du Congo, North Kivu
- CEP Champ École Paysan, farmer field school
- FO-RI Farmers Organizations Leading Research and Innovation
- CERAVEG Agronomic and veterinary research centre of the Université Catholique du Graben
- GERDAL Groupe d'Expérimentation et de Recherche, Développement et Actions Localisées
- COOCENKI Coopérative Centrale du Nord Kivu
- LOFEPACO Ligue des Organisations des Femmes Paysannes du Congo
- CSA Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires
- SYDIP Syndicat de Défense des Intérêts Paysans
- DAP Diammonium phosphate, a mineral fertiliser
- UCG Université Catholique du Graben
- DeSIRA+ EU research and innovation initiative, call managed by ENABEL
- UNIGOM Université de Goma
This project is part of the FO-RI programme, Farmers Organizations Leading Research and Innovation, implemented by the AgriCord Alliance with the financial support of the European Union.
