By Mieke Bourne and Yvonne Otieno for Agroforestry World

April 14, 2012

Environmental degradation can only be reversed by addressing direct and indirect drivers of change. The said drivers of change include public participation in decision-making, cultural factors and technological change. Collectively these factors influence the level of production and consumption of ecosystem services and sustainability of the production base.

This was said by participants at the Beating Famine Conference who were speaking during a panel discussion that sought to address the issue of land regeneration for food security. During this panel session, different presenters from World Vision and the World Agroforestry Centre made presentations on approaches that had worked in different areas.

The major limiting factor to food security in Africa may be based on land health. Other impacts of shocks on food production such as weeds and drought can be increased by building resistance into the systems. This was according to Douglas Brown, Director, Agriculture and Food Security, World Vision International who made a presentation titled The foundations for resilient livelihoods: soils, savings and trees.

He observed how the systems around livelihoods of smallholder farmers are complex and interlinked with   many aspects from labour availability, land resources and food consumption variations.

“By understanding the system you can effect change and for World Vision the main areas that have been identified for investment as a foundation for resilient livelihoods are soils, savings and trees,” he said. He proposed that while there are many other important factors in land regeneration, if these three factors are not considered, then building resilience in the system would be a great challenge.

“These three areas of investment are activities that smallholder farmers can undertake on their own farms that contribute to resilience in a positive way,” he added.

Picking up on the issue of challenges, the second presentation focused on how Landcare programmes are working to address some of the institutional challenges that have led to land degradation within East Africa.

According to Joseph Tanui from World Agroforestry Centre, Landcare has worked in the region using an action research approach and has linked individuals and groups to address issues at landscape level while ensuring that individuals still benefit.

“We present Landcare as an ethic and a philosophy that enables individuals and communities to approach agriculture in a nurturing way,” said Tanui.

“Landcare often uses a community identified need as an entry point activity. It seeks to develop innovative platforms to represent a number of groups to influence policy and negotiate by-law creation on behalf of the community,” he added.

Tanui explained that Landcare works through principles that ensure participation, ownership and demand-driven development and use of multi-institutional strategies. Additionally it involves understanding and managing trade-offs with the community, enhancing the role of local government and building on past experiences.

Tanui’s presentation focused on Grassroots participation in land regeneration through the Landcare approach. Landcare is defined as a movement of autonomous farmer-led organizations; it is an extension approach that inexpensively disseminates agroforestry and other technologies as a set of appropriate land management practices.

Some preliminary results indicate that improved water and soil conservation and knowledge management and access was reported by those participating in the Landcare programme. A table was presented demonstrating how Landcare programmes have been funded and launched in different countries in unique ways. Of particular interest is the case of South Africa where the programme was mainstreamed into the Ministry of Agriculture compared to East Africa where a combination of donor, the World Agroforestry Centre and NGO support laid the foundation for Landcare activities.

Rowland Bunch, Agroecologist  (and author of Two Ears of Corn: A Guide to People–Centered   Agricultural) Improvement changed the focus of the session to the subject of soil by making a presentation on Green manure: soil recuperation at zero cost. According to him, experience from Central America in the 1970s and 80s has shown dramatic improvement of the soil using mulch and then green manure. Composting had a large impact however, for cereal production the cost of its production exceeded its benefits. Green manure cover crops for this purpose include trees and bushes and can be cut down at any stage of growth and are often left on the soil surface to be broken down by natural processes including worms and termites.

Rowland explained how hundreds of thousands of farmers in Latin America are using a variety of green mulch systems and incorporating zero tillage once the soil biomass is sufficient. Green manure in addition to improving soil biomass can control weeds, improve fertility and can be used as food. For many farmers there are edible leaves or beans that are consumed before the green manure crop is incorporated into the soil. He also noted that within the semi-arid and arid areas the green mulch system is almost exclusively dominated by woody perennials. He recommended that since green manure crops do not occupy space that the farmer uses for crops, they must not incur cash costs and they must not increase labour costs.

Triple bottom line of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) was the subject of the fourth presentation made by Rowan Reid, Project Manager- FMNR,  World Vision Australia and Rob Francis Coordinator, Australian Master TreeGrower Program. According to the presenters, the FMNR technology is considered simple and effective, and since it conveys knowledge and not materials, it is affordable. They explained that though there is little data and impact, what is available suggests about a 70% increase in yield and farmer accounts.

“Farmers don’t need an economist, if the technology matches their immediate needs, capability and resources; perception of risks and aspirations then it is common sense,” said Rowan.

FMNR takes away the risk of planting trees and losing them, a good entry-point and advantages for scaling up. FMNR is a good idea, the question now is how do you introduce a simple idea and scale it up?

The final presentation during this session was by Jonathan Muriuki who focused on Evergreen Agriculture in East Africa. In his presentation, he described how the highlands of East Africa are characterized by steep slopes with erosion threats while the drylands are generally overgrazed and degraded. The area is subject to conventional farming practices with intensive tillage that destroys the biological and ecological integrity of the soil system.

One way to help regeneration was through Conservation Agriculture. Conservation Agriculture involves the application of three principles – permanent soil cover, minimum soil disturbance and crop rotations and associations.  Conservation Agriculture with Trees  (CAWT) is one of the three forms of Evergreen Agriculture. The other forms are regeneration practice/method and trees in conventional agriculture. Evergreen Agriculture is a type of agroforestry in which trees are intercropped with field crops.

According to Jonathan, when trees are integrated into the Conservation Agriculture system, one sees increased benefit in the three principles. Tree roots and soil fauna take over the tillage function, the increased biomass from trees protects the soil and feeds the soil biota and reduce weeds, pests and diseases.

However, three things; right germplasm, proper practices and enabling environment are needed to scale up CAWT. There are plans to implement three Evergreen Agriculture projects in the East Africa region. One of the projects will be implemented in Machakos in Kenya and Mbarali in Tanzania. This project will focus on characterization of typologies, germplasm distribution systems, approaches for extension, demonstration and participatory trials and knowledge management and communication.

Other parallel sessions focused on land regeneration for climate change adaption and  Carbon sequestration, sustainable water & water energy for land regeneration.

Useful Resources

Biographies of experts at the Beating Famine Conference

Paper by Joseph Tanui, Diane Russell, Delia Catacutan, and Thomas Yatich Landcare in East Africa

A short history of FMNR by Tony Rinuado

Watch videos Landcare in Kenya, Uganda and  Tanzania

By Kate Langford for Agroforestry World

Originally published October 7, 2011

“If you choose the right species of trees and manage them in the right way, they can be compatible with agriculture and provide many benefits,” said Dennis Garrity in addressing the World Congress of Conservation Agriculture during his last week as Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre.

Garrity outlined examples of how trees are transforming the livelihoods of many African farmers and at the same time improving exhausted soils.

While attending the conference in Brisbane, Australia, Garrity was interviewed on QUT News and by Radio Australia. In the latter interview he discusses the challenges of disseminating the message about the benefits of trees on farms to farmers in Africa.

“Nut trees and other cash crops are a source of food as well as cash to farmers,” explains Garrity. “You tend to get a greater income per square metre with tree-based systems,”

While conservation agriculture techniques are increasingly popular in countries like Australia, smallholder farmers in Africa face many hurdles to adopting the practice. One of the key principles in conservation agriculture is retaining crop residues. But in Africa, most smallholder farmers have both crops and livestock so they tend to use all available crop residues to feed their livestock.

Garrity points to examples of how Evergreen Agriculture –incorporating trees into crop production systems – has boosted crop production by up to 200 percent. One form of Evergreen Agriculture, known as Conservation Agriculture with Trees or CAWT, keeps the emphasis on reduced tillage, but expands the principle of residue retention to include the integration of trees and shrubs in crop fields.

Of particular importance to African farmers are fertilizer trees. These trees improve soil fertility by drawing nitrogen from the air and transferring it to the soil through their roots and leaf litter. In a region where two-thirds of farmers cannot afford to buy mineral fertilizers, the trees provide an inexpensive organic solution.

By Dennis Garrity for Agroforestry World

Originally published September 16, 2011

A couple of decades ago, when my colleagues began urging African farmers to plant trees in the middle of their maize fields, many agricultural development specialists thought we were a bit deranged.

People can’t eat trees. So what good would planting one do for the food security of rural families and villages?

Before long, though, many of the farmers who had planted the soil-replenishing “fertilizer trees” that the World Agroforestry Centre had identified, were proving that all this made good sense. Within only a few years of planting these trees and shrubs, farmers were reaping abundant harvests of maize from fields whose exhausted soil had previously produced almost nothing.

Millions of farmers from around Africa have improved their soils and boosted their livelihoods by culturing nitrogen-fixing species such the indigenous African acacia, Faidherbia albida, or others like Gliricidia selum or Calliandra calothyrsus, introduced from Central America.

The usefulness of trees to agriculture has now caught on with African governments, as well.

GREAT GREEN WALL

Eleven countries in the Sahel, at the heart of the continent, are creating a Great Green Wall, a monumental agroforestry programme working toward environmental and development transformation in the region. The heart of this programme is the vast expansion of agroforestry parklands on farmers’ fields, where their food crops grow under the canopy of a forest of compatible trees.

This vast belt of evergreen agriculture, stretching from Dakar, Senegal, to Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, will employ the best of farmer-proven and scientifically-confirmed agroforestry techniques to halt desertification while alleviating poverty for thousands of local towns and villages.

This effort builds directly on the demonstrated success of the millions of farmers across this region who are already using fertilizer trees and shrubs to replenish soil nutrients on their farms. In the process, they are boosting the food security of their households and nations, while improving their livelihoods and “re-greening” the environment.

Fertilizer trees represent a long-term and sustainable solution for the declining agricultural yields that have plagued Africa. And, by the way, they are a solution that costs the farm family practically zero cash investment, and minimal risk. The current practice of government subsidies for mineral fertilizer helps in the short term. But what happens when the subsidies stop?

EIGHT-FOLD INCREASE

When I met Mariko Majoni, a Malawian farmer, a few years ago, he had exhausted his pension money on mineral fertilizers, which had increased his maize yields, but left his soil poor again when the money ran out. However, after he had acquired Gliricidia seeds from a local agroforestry research station, the health of his soil dramatically improved, and it became much better at retaining nutrients and moisture. Within two years of planting these trees, his maize yields had increased eightfold.

Planting fertilizer trees in cropland is an example of “evergreen agriculture” – an environmentally-sound farming system where food crops and trees grow harmoniously together. The practice reduces poverty, increases agricultural production, and contributes to environmental sustainability by conserving water and soil fertility, while enabling communities to adapt to drought and climate change.

Evergreen agriculture is primed to spearhead a transformative renaissance in agriculture. It has already regenerated millions of hectares of degraded land in the Sahel, as well as parts of East and Southern Africa, dramatically enhancing productivity and improving smallholder livelihoods.

The Great Green Wall, to which donors meeting in Germany this year committed $3 billion, will further the cause, while slowing desertification that affects millions.

Agroforestry makes farms more productive, restoring degraded lands while diversifying diets, providing wood fuel and animal feed. Wild food species such as the Sahelian apple, the bush mango and the African plum have been brought out of forests, domesticated, and are now grown on farmland, providing a resilient source of food to sustain families during periods of hunger and lessening reliance on expensive food imports.

In Guinea, villagers who once eked out a living in the forests now have a reliable food source and dramatically higher incomes. Meanwhile, tree cover is increasing and biodiversity is returning.

STORING CARBON

Agroforestry also helps combat climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the transformation of degraded agricultural lands to agroforestry is a promising way to sequester carbon. Agroforestry investments over the next 50 years could remove 50 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

To feed an escalating global population, we must invest in pro-poor, anti-hunger, sustainable agricultural growth. And there are innovative solutions – like agroforestry – that are ready to roll out now.

What we need is more incentives and support for poor countries to transfer these truly practical and low-cost solutions to tens of millions more farms across Africa. The key is building awareness that there is another way, agroforestry for food security, and that it mainly involves the wider sharing of knowledge and good quality tree seeds.

I’m sure Mr. Majoni would agree.