Exploring Agricultural Self-Sustainability: A Tomato Experiment

The organization I work for provides educational services through a school that operates with a focus on quality rather than profit. While our primary aim isn’t financial gain, maintaining standard services requires funding. To avoid overburdening parents with increased school fees, we are exploring alternative ways to achieve financial self-sustainability.

One potential solution is agriculture, not for commercial purposes, but to offset the cost of feeding our boarding students. Food expenses consume a significant portion of our budget, so growing some of what the students eat could make a meaningful difference. However, given our limited agricultural land, we decided to experiment with container gardening.

As the head of administration, I volunteered to lead this initiative. The board agreed to start with hybrid tomatoes, and a generous board member donated seeds for the project. Using seed trays, we prepared the seedbed with a mix of decomposed organic matter from chicken droppings and sawdust. The trays were placed under banana trees to shield them from direct rainfall.

Within days, the seedlings began to emerge. After a few weeks, they were transplanted into soil bags filled with a similar organic mixture. The donor of the seeds mentioned that this hybrid variety completes its life cycle in just 72 days, so I eagerly counted down to the fruiting stage. This was early October, and we had hoped that the rainy season would extend into November, ensuring favorable growing conditions during the critical growth phase.

Unfortunately, the rain stopped unexpectedly in mid-October. Recognizing the risk of the plants wilting, I arranged for daily artificial watering. While this effort kept the plants alive, it became evident that the plants weren’t thriving as they should. The leaves lacked their usual lushness, and the flowering and fruiting were significantly below expectations compared to similar plants grown during the rainy season.

Challenges of Growing Tomatoes in the Dry Season

Several factors contribute to the underperformance of our tomato plants in the current dry season. The intense sunlight, higher temperatures, and lower humidity characteristic of this period create suboptimal conditions for plant productivity.

Tomatoes belong to the group of plants known as C3 plants, which are particularly vulnerable under high light intensity. In such conditions, they experience increased photorespiration—a process where plants consume oxygen and release carbon dioxide, wasting energy and reducing food production. This means less energy is available for growth, flowering, and fruiting. When combined with inadequate water, as is often the case during the dry season, the impact on productivity becomes even more pronounced.

In contrast, C4 plants like maize and sorghum are better equipped to handle these extreme conditions. Thanks to their specialized leaf anatomy (Kranz anatomy) and biochemical mechanisms, C4 plants minimize photorespiration and conserve water, making them more efficient in hot, dry, and high-light environments. If our tomato variety were a C4 plant, we wouldn’t be facing these challenges.

Could C3 Plants Be Engineered Into C4 Plants?

The possibility of engineering C3 plants like tomatoes into C4 plants has intrigued scientists for years. While progress has been made in understanding the genetic and physiological mechanisms, this transformation is yet to become a reality. If successful, such advancements could revolutionize agriculture, allowing crops like tomatoes to thrive under intense light, high temperatures, and water scarcity. Until then, we will continue growing C3 tomatoes during the rainy season, when conditions are naturally favorable.

Lessons Learned

This experiment has been a valuable learning experience. While container gardening offers a practical solution for land-scarce agricultural projects, success still heavily depends on understanding the environmental needs of the crops. The differences in productivity between rainy and dry seasons underscore the importance of aligning planting schedules with the natural strengths of the plants being cultivated.

For now, we remain committed to refining our approach, leveraging what we’ve learned to improve future harvests, and continuing our journey toward financial self-sustainability in ways that align with our mission.

All the images used were snapped using Samsung Galaxy Tab A (2016)

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