Why not plant in rows?

I recently listened to a man who had just visited South Sudan for the first time, telling his audience incredulously, “Farmers there don’t even know how to plant crops in rows!”

The implication was that someone needed to teach them. I offered a different take. I told him, “In all my visits to small farms in Africa over many years, I have never come across a farmer who didn’t know that he or she could plant in rows, in fact many do. But they are also aware that planting in rows has advantages and disadvantages depending on crop, soils, and other conditions.”

He was skeptical, but ready to listen.

The main reason why in the West we plant in rows, I explained, is that most machinery cannot handle messy and mixed. In Africa, ox-drawn “weeders” will need crops in rows, and hand-tilled crops using a ridge system in lines will need to have rows. But hand labor is adaptable and doesn’t need rows if they don’t make sense.

When you are dealing with a mix of crops, there will be different spacing needs for each. Not planting in rows, especially in the higher rainfall areas, allows for exploiting soil changes or patches of light.

It allows for spacing plants closer around fertile anthills or increasing the number of plants in a depression with more moisture or leaving space for a spreading gourd or pumpkin or accommodating an existing banana or coffee plant or putting climbing plants near to tall, early maturing plants so they can climb the drying stalks.

It allows for three or four plants to be grouped in raised hills. It allows for building a small basin around a group of plants to retain rainwater or digging a small channel to drain a depression that can flood. Planting in rows must have advantages; sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.