Africa’s deserts and range lands offer a wealth of opportunities, if harnessed, Dr Garrity told the African food secuurity conference in Nairobi
last week. Read more…
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For years, it has been a bit of conventional wisdom among researchers and development experts: The loss of ecosystem services, especially those provided by forests, will have a profound impact on the poor, as deforestation and forest degradation decrease human well-being.
By Godfrey Chisusu for Transformations Bi-weekly Vol 6 Issue 7
The “Building a Large EverGreen Agriculture Network in Southern Africa” (BLEANSA) project was officially launched in Salima, Malawi on 5 April 2013 in a ceremony graced by the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Hon. Jermoth Ulemu Chilapondwa, MP.
Funded by the Flemish Government and dedicated to promoting agroforestry and exploiting its potential, this initiative will focus on creating a network of organizations and innovation platforms to coordinate research and development in agroforestry. It will also review experiences gained from past research to refine and optimize evergreen agriculture. The initiative will also distil experiences into policy recommendations, and share these widely to encourage policy makers to develop policies which facilitate the widescale promotion and adoption of evergreen agriculture.
In his keynote address, Hon. Chilapondwa, mentioned that building strong networks targeting famers especially in the dry zones, requires innovations that can increase agricultural production and at the same time ensure sustainability in the face of climate change. This is the key to meeting the food needs of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, he said. “The Government of Flanders has been expanding its development assistance programmes in the region to improve livelihoods by supporting sustainable food production. It has, for example, supported tree seed production by smallholder farmers in the districts of Angonia and Tsangano in Mozambique and Kasungu and Mzimba in Malawi to meet the increasing demand for agroforestry tree seed,” noted Hon. Chilapondwa.
Prof. Temu, ICRAF’s Deputy Director General – Regions, Partnerships and Impact, encouraged partners to focus on transforming agriculture to evergreen agriculture. He noted that the demand for new agricultural land, fuelled by population growth and demand for food, fodder and timber, will continue over the next decades. ICRAF will continue to apply its research findings to stimulate agricultural and forest growth, raise farmers’ incomes and protect the environment, he said.
Participants at the launch were drawn from Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, South Africa and the host, Malawi.
There is widespread agreement that sustainable forest management on a global scale is not achievable without halting land degradation. But this view is not shared by the rationale and focus of the tools and mechanisms designed during the past decade to promote and incentivize sustainable forest management.
As if to prove the point, the global coalition of the willing has been putting its money and effort into saying “Yes we can achieve sustainable forest management on a global scale without halting land degradation.”
At the 2011 Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) in Wageningen, participants took stock of global science and best practices concerning climate smart agriculture worldwide. Participants agreed on a broad agenda for action for science and policy to strengthen food security, adaptation and mitigation (Wageningen Declaration). The 2013 Conference agenda builds on that consensus focusing on three main themes: farm and food systems, landscape and regional issues, and the integrative and transformative institutional and policy aspects that will bridge across scales to link science and practice to ensure food security, poverty alleviation and multiple ecosystem services.
Agroforestry – the integration of trees and shrubs with crops and livestock systems – has strong potential in addressing problems of food insecurity in developing countries. Done well, it allows producers to make the best use of their land, can boost field crop yields, diversify income, and increase resilience to climate change.