Yearly Archives: 2015

Africa innovations: 15 ideas helping to transform a continent

By May Muthuri in News on October 1, 2015

A mobile phone database for dairy farmers and a strain of sweet potato that can help fight child blindness. these are just two of the imaginative new ideas that are tackling Africa’s old problems.

1 HIPPO WATER ROLLER

Idea: The Hippo water roller is a drum that can be rolled on the ground, making it easier for those without access to taps to haul larger amounts of water faster.

Problem: Two out of every five people in Africa have no nearby water facilities and are forced to walk long distances to reach water sources. Traditional methods of balancing heavy loads of water on the head limit the amount people can carry, and cause long-term spinal injuries. Women and children usually carry out these time-consuming tasks, missing out on educational and economic opportunities. In extreme cases, they can be at increased risks of assault or rape when travelling long distances.

Method: The Hippo roller can be filled with water which is then pushed or pulled using a handle. The weight of the water is spread evenly so a full drum carries almost five times more than traditional containers, but weighs in at half the usual 20kg, allowing it to be transported faster. A steel handle has been designed to allow two pushers for steeper hills. “Essentially it alleviates the suffering people endure just to collect water and take it home. Boreholes or wells can dry out but people can still use the same roller [in other wells]. One roller will typically serve a household of seven for five to seven years,” said project manager Grant Gibbs.

Verdict: Around 42,000 Hippo rollers have been sold in 21 African countries and demand exceeds supply. Costing $125 each, they are distributed through NGOs. A mobile manufacturing unit is set to begin making them in Tanzania. Nelson Mandela has made a “personal appeal” for supporting for the project, saying it “will positively change the lives of millions of our fellow South Africans”. Monica Mark

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ICRAF at GLF: Boosting landscape restoration with agroforestry

By May Muthuri in News on October 1, 2015

Land restoration is a key theme at the 2015 Global Landscapes Forum (GLF), the biggest side-event of the climate change negotiations in Paris in December. The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) is hosting a discussion on the role agroforestry can play in restoring landscapes. The following is an interview with session organizer Henry Neufeldt, Head of Climate Change at ICRAF.

Why is agroforestry an important instrument for landscape restoration? Trees on farms have many benefits. They create microclimates, enable carbon sequestration, support biodiversity, improve soil fertility and health, and provide nutrition. Most of these effects increase the resilience of the ecosystem by helping it to adapt and mitigate negative impacts/shocks. Fertilizer trees are particularly useful for land regeneration, soil health and food security; fruit trees are important for nutrition.

How did you realize the potential of agroforestry for landscape restoration?

It only works if there is a net positive return on investment. While the long-term positive benefits are evident, short-term returns are critical and need an integrated approach including annual crops and marketable products. People have to see that it works. This is necessary for short-term adoption rates and the long-term success of landscape restoration.

Why do you want to bring the topic to GLF 2015?

Landscape restoration through agroforestry contributes to climate change mitigation and adaption and to other ecosystem services; and it improves the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Our discussion at the Global Landscapes Forum 2015 will focus on tree-based approaches to regaining ecological functionality and enhancing human well-being across degraded farming landscapes in the tropics.

Food forests could help end hunger for nomads in arid East Africa

By May Muthuri in News on October 1, 2015

The name itself sounds idyllic: pastoralism. That’s the broad term used to describe nomadic communities who raise livestock across open areas of land as water supplies and seasons change. Cattle raised in such a manner is the main source of livelihood for people in northern Kenya; it accounts for about 10 percent of Kenya’s gross domestic product and 95 percent of family income among pastoralists, according to estimates from Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture.

But the reality is less picturesque than its name might suggest. Migration routes cut off owing to privatization of land, recurring droughts, and subsequent livestock deaths have led to hunger and malnutrition among pastoralists, with many communities dependent on food relief to survive.

In drought-ravaged Samburu County, 86 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. But it’s on this semiarid landscape that Aviram Rozin, founder of Sadhana Forest, is training Samburu pastoralists to grow forests—food forests.

Designed to emulate the layered ecology of a natural forest, a food forest is made of seven layers that range from tall trees to short shrubs, each working in support of the others. In Samburu County, these forests are planted with 18 species of drought-resistant, fruit-bearing indigenous trees and shrubs, including African oak, the fruits of which are said to be rich in protein and iron, and moringa, known locally as “mother’s helper” thanks to its fruit, which helps stimulate milk production in lactating mothers and reduces malnutrition among infants. Sadhana Forest has trained more than 1,000 people in this low-tech approach to agriculture since it launched its Kenya operation in May 2014.

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The more trees the better

By May Muthuri in News on September 22, 2015

“We are looking at a revolution,” declared Dennis Garrity, UNCCD Drylands Ambassador and Chair of the EverGreen Agriculture Partnership, at the 14^th World Forestry Congress in Durban. Opening a World Café on trees and resilience he said, “The agriculture that we see today will be transformed into one where trees are integrated into every agricultural system.”

Agriculturalists are increasingly recognizing that incorporating trees and shrubs directly into croplands can dramatically increase productivity, income and the resilience of farming systems. African farmers are showing the way to successfully integrate trees into croplands, using African species like Faidherbia and Gliricidia, as trees and bushes, to increase crop yields, raise soil fertility, conserve water and feed animals.

The most outstanding example of this use of trees is in the Sahel, where 5 million hectares of desertified land has been brought back under cultivation by farmers nurturing the trees that sprouted spontaneously from the soil. Once trees in the landscape were freed of government regulation, this practice spread quickly across the whole Sahel, with astonishing results. Some areas are showing up to a 400 percent increase in maize yield, with no other input than the nitrogen released by the trees.

And the revolution is spreading. In Europe, French farmers are profitably interplanting walnuts and other high-value trees with cereals because the European Union has reversed its policy and it is now encouraging the growing of trees on cropland. Farmers in the corn belt of the United States are also starting to integrate trees into their fields, using high-value species in alleys, which also function as windbreaks on prairie lands. Elsewhere, US farmers are integrating forages, annual crops and tree crops, mimicking the original agriculture, rather than the artificial monocrops of corn and soya beans. Grasslands are also being found to be more productive with trees on them, as well as regenerating more rapidly.

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Native shrubs: a simple fix for drought-stricken crops in Sub-Saharan Africa

By May Muthuri in News on September 22, 2015

Variability is the only guarantee when it comes to the rainfall of the Sahel, the transitional zone between the parched Sahara Desert and the wetter savanna in the south. The rains often arrive late, and sometimes they barely come at all.

This can lead to devastating crop failures and famine in a region that relies heavily on the rain to grow most of its food. Over the centuries, farmers across the Sahel have adapted to the fickle rainfall by growing crops such as millet, sorghum, peanut, and cowpea, which are well suited to produce grain even during periods of drought stress.

Sometimes, however, the crops’ adaptation is not enough to protect them from extended droughts, and grain yields plummet due to lack of water. To confound the already dire problem, the population of the Sahel is growing and crop yields are not increasing in step.

In these nutrient-poor soils with low fertilizer input, the land is in desperate need of agriculture systems that can provide adequate yields and soil conservation with minimal inputs.

This research on soil hydrology in the Sahel is part of a larger project investigating how traditional techniques practiced by some farmers can be adapted to further increase crop yields, even during times of drought stress. We found that planting food crops together with the native woody shrub Guiera senegalensis can improve crop growth with minimal costs. It’s a simple method that can be used not only in the Sahel but may be applicable in many other areas that are periodically inhospitable to agriculture.

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The method of restoring degraded lands efficiently contributes to climate change mitigation

By May Muthuri in News on September 22, 2015

Integrating trees in agricultural systems helps rural communities adapt to climate change, mitigate its impact and improve their livelihoods. Particularly for farmers in the Sahel, trees growing on agricultural land play an important role: they do not only prevent soil erosion but provide a wide range of services such as food, increased soil fertility, and fuel wood.

Taking up on the various benefits of trees and to counteract a trend of environmental degradation since the 1970s, non-profit organizations promoted the cultivation and active regeneration of trees on degraded land. This method of restoring degraded lands to regain their health and productivity is known as Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR). FMNR is a low-cost land regeneration system as it is based on managing the regrowth of living tree stumps that constitute a vast “underground forest” that is ready to grow.

Several studies conclude that FMNR may have contributed not only to a remarkable rise in vegetation greenness or “re-greening” of the Sahel, but also to improvements in agricultural productivity and environmental conditions. Testimony from FMNR experts and farmers across the Sahel region where FMNR is being implemented shows that FMNR has social and environmental benefits. It has impact on tree cover and diversity and availability of tree products which provide income through sale, and impact on-farm yields through soil improvement and protection.

FMNR is now being considered as a promising climate-smart agricultural practice that represents an affordable means of enhancing rural livelihoods as well, and may contribute to climate change mitigation by sequestering subtantial amounts of carbon in tree biomass and soil in addition to conserving biodiversity. Despite the potential relevance of FMNR as an efficient way to contribute to climate change mitigation and livelihood, there has been so far no attempt to substantiate anecdotal evidence with factual data provided by field-based experiments.

CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) launched a series of research activities to respond to this lack of evidence necessary for the acceptance of the benefits of FMNR by development research communities. The research is being implemented by a team of researchers from the Center of International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), the International Crops Research Institute of the Semi Arid tropics (ICRISAT) and Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research /Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the National Institute of Agronomic Research of Niger (INRAN) at the Climate-Smart Village in Fakara, Niger.

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