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Great initiative, i tried chili as a crop since many reports have attested to its efficacy as a product. so why not grow it then. so i tried it on elephant corridors in the panhandles of the Okavango. Yielded similar results.. I'll share the initiative here.
HI Susan... Farmers don't have to entirely change. They can explore different other arrangements which will allow them to still have a reasonable amount of their traditional crop by the end of the harvest. In our case.... we knew many farmers would still want to have maize/sorghum.... so you grow those and buffer them with a deterrent like chilli. Of which chilli buffered crops yielded significantly higher than non-buffered. In our experiments we did a 2m buffer belt around the crop. Sizes of farms/land available is also a challenge in our area because the Okavango Delta itself is tightly protected locally and international. Many farmers are only given 1-2ha. However, I want to believe that if you have a larger area, the greater the size of the buffer you put up... the more protected your crop will be. We even had thoughts of planting in belts.... like chilli on the outer periphery, followed by an inner belt of cowpeas, then an inner belt of groundnuts until the most important crop is the last in the center. You know time & resources limits us.
Very true Ede!!! especially in our cases of smallholers/subsistence farmers. In our case it was a good mixture... For example many of farmers have appreciated the efficacy of processed chili (crushed, greased, briquettes, chili bombs etc) in protecting their farms. So instead of them buying and processing chilli from retailers, they now had their own guaranteed supply locally. Otherwise, it is easy to trade off/sell groundnuts & cowpea as they commonly eaten in nearer localities. What we also appreciated was that it was a much better alternative of availing food. Firstly, if you have all millet or maize, there were higher chances that you might not even harvest a thing. Then you face no food and no money to even source food for the whole season. Rather, if you had groundnut, cowpeas and chilli, you could harvest and exchange these alternatives for cereals from nearer farmers who are not impacted much by elephants.