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Agroforestry:
a natural remedy for the decline in traditional medicine
Agroforestry is central to the health of rural households.
In Africa 75 percent of rural households rely on traditional
medicines and two thirds of all medicinal plants are
woody perennials. The problem is that many of these
species are disappearing as wild populations are being
overexploited, so the World Agroforestry Centre is
investigating the potential for the cultivation of
traditional medicinal species for both home use and
market sale. One such species is Prunus africana,
whose bark is used to treat prostate disorders and
which is currently threatened with extinction in the
wild. Its cultivation is now providing a significant
source of income for poor farmers. For rural communities
ravaged by HIV/AIDS and suffering the loss of farm
workers, the lower labour requirements of agroforestry
systems provides an additional benefit along with
the direct income from the medical products these
systems provide.
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The
Lake Victoria Basin Initiative: restoring health to
a beleaguered lake and landscape
Lake Victoria is suffering from a supersaturation
of nutrients mainly as a result of accelerating soil
erosion in its catchment. Since 1999, a joint project
involving international, national and local partners
has been researching the causes of the lake’s problems
and developing policies and practical management strategies
to address them. Research has found that land cleared
for crops initially retains its fertility for 20 years
, then suffers accelerated degradation thereafter.
Working with farmers, land management trials have
been set up to reduce erosion and reduce water quality.
There is still a long way to go, but early results
are encouraging.
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Finding
the Limits: Agroforestry technologies in the fight
against poverty in western Kenya
Farms in densely populated western Kenya are small,
soils are depleted and harvests poor. Agroforestry
researchers and farmers have found that two technologies
– improved fallows and transferring leafy matter from
locally-growing shrubs – replenish soils and improve
crop production. But a key study of why – and why
not – rural people adopt these technologies reveals
that social and economic factors severely limit their
potential to ease poverty in the region.
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When
a tree becomes a garden vegetable – baobab gardens
in Mali
For centuries, the leaves of the baobab tree have
been a mainstay in the diets of people throughout
the Sahel of West Africa, where the dry season lasts
nine months and obtaining enough food is a constant
struggle. Now, in Mali, agroforestry researchers and
farmers working together have come up with a revolutionary
new way to cultivate them.
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Policy
reform is the key to preventing fire-related disasters
in Southeast Asia
Between 1997 and 1998, fires raged across Indonesia
causing an estimated USD 4.5 billion in damage. The
fires spread smoke as far as southern Thailand and
the Philippines placing the health of over 75 million
people at risk and elevating Indonesia to one of the
largest polluters in the world in terms of carbon
emission. A groundbreaking study conducted by researchers
from the World Agroforestry Centre, the Centre for
International Forestry Research and the United States
Forest Service concluded that three primary causes
were to blame for the fires that resulted in an environmental
disaster that grabbed world headlines.
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Agroforestry
a priority in modernizing Ugandan agriculture
Uganda recently launched an ambitious plan to modernize
its agriculture sector as part of its poverty eradication
strategy. Unlike other agricultural modernization
plans, which focus on mechanization and high-tech
systems, the plan focuses on ensuring that subsistence
farmers have better access to a wide variety of sustainable,
low-input agricultural techniques—including agroforestry.
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Farmer-driven
strategy is rebuilding valuable tree diversity on
farms
On-farm domestication of valuable trees is helping
to conserve important
genetic resources and earn extra income for farmers
in the Peruvian Amazon. Population pressures and small
farm sizes in this region mean that the fallows in
traditional slash-and-burn agriculture have become
so short that valuable tree species and soil fertility
are no longer able to regenerate naturally. This leads
to degraded local biodiversity, reduced
annual crop yields and increasing poverty. Many of
the wild trees that communities used to rely on have
also been lost through logging. But by selecting and
domesticating these species farmers are shifting away
from a reliance on annual cropping to more sustainable
agroforestry systems and creating new income opportunities
while protecting local biodiversity.
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Caring
for the land, the people and the future
Landcare, an innovative approach for encouraging and
enhancing local
initiatives to address land degradation, was developed
initially by farmer and conservation groups in Australia.
It subsequently evolved independently in the Philippines,
where farmer groups have cultivated a successful grassroots
approach to finding new agricultural solutions to
improve the environment and increase incomes. Attracting
outside technical resources from organizations such
as the World Agroforestry Centre, these groups have
successfully provided new information to farmers throughout
the region, and partnered with local government for
financial and political support.
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College
adopts agroforestry and turns from a barrier to a
bridge for local farmers
Proximity to the local farming community didn’t mean
that the Wondo Genet College of Forestry in Ethiopia
necessarily had much to do with it. Farmers also had
little interest in the college. But all that changed
when the college joined ANAFE: the African Network
for Agroforestry Education, and introduced agroforestry
and integrated resource management courses into its
curriculum. Needing practical help to develop locally-relevant
multidisciplinary training they turned to the expertise
of local farmers, who then took a much greater interest
in working with the college. ANAFE is helping hundreds
of colleges and universities across Africa to develop
more practically-oriented, multi-disciplinary training.
Now a similar network in South East Asia is doing
the same.
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Building
on traditional agroforestry increasing biodiversity
in the Sahel of West Africa
People in the impoverished and semiarid Sahel of West
Africa have long
experience in agroforestry in the traditional system
with trees in cropland, known as the parklands. But
the system – and the biodiversity it contains - is
threatened by outdated policies and ever-increasing
pressure on trees and land resources. A study of that
biodiversity is identifying community groups that
can help promote it – and agroforestry.
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Temperate
fruits go tropical apples, peaches, pears and plums
take to the hills of Uganda
Ugandan consumers can’t seem to get enough imported
temperate fruit, and certainly not at prices they
can afford. The Ugandan government wishes to eradicate
rural poverty by transforming subsistence farms into
commercial enterprises with high-value crops. Agroforestry
researchers are working to solve both problems – adding
apples, peaches, pears and plums to farms in Uganda’s
highlands. And their efforts are bearing fruit - literally.
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The
growing impact of small-scale East African tree nurseries
Small-scale tree nurseries, many of them on tiny farms
are among the fastest growing small businesses in
East Africa. Unfortunately, people in East Africa
who would like to establish tree nurseries face many
problems ranging from a lack of technical know-how
to a lack of seeds and seedlings. The World Agroforestry
Centre and its development partners pioneered in 2000
a tree nursery community project so that more of the
world’s poor farming communities could reap the benefits
of agroforestry. Already, hundreds of improved and
new tree nurseries have begun producing thousands
of agroforestry tree seedlings for a fast-growing
farm market.
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From
wasteland to woodland — farmers are ‘re-greening’
Shinyanga
Since 1986, the World Agroforestry Centre has worked
with the Tanzanian government, non-governmental
organizations and farmers to develop agroforestry
innovations that are now ‘regreening’ the severely
deforested area of Shinyanga. Today, because of
this committed collaborative effort, many of the
Sukuma people of the region have better access to
fuelwood, timber and fodder species, which they
are planting in their fields leading to healthier,
more prosperous lives.
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Nyabyeya
Forestry College blazes the trail for agroforestry
education
The Nyabyeya Forestry College in western Uganda is
the first tertiary educational institution in east
and central Africa to offer diploma-level education
in agroforestry. Its courses are meeting a strongly
felt need for technical training that is having an
impact right across the region. The positive impacts
of its work are also being locally felt through an
agroforestry demonstration plot that has been set
up to help disseminate proven technologies to its
students, visitors and farmers from the surrounding
community.
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HIV/AIDS:
We are all compelled
Nearly 2.5 million people in Kenya are living with
HIV/AIDS, and a high percentage of these reside in
the western part of the country around Lake Victoria.
As part of its ongoing work in the region, the World
Agroforestry Centre is focusing on enhancing coping
strategies for families and communities whose lives
have been devastated by the virus.
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The
Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn matrix reconciling
conflicting interests for forests and people
Reconciling conflicting interests in tropical rainforests
is not easy, and one result is continued massive worldwide
deforestation. Long term environmental needs clash
with pressing short-term human needs and policy makers
must achieve a difficult balance. The ‘Alternatives
to Slash and Burn’ program has developed a matrix
to plot these conflicting interests and outcomes to
help advise policymakers. Testing over the last eight
years across the world has shown its practical utility
in identifying tradeoffs. In many cases a middle path
of development involving agroforestry provides a suitable
option for reconciling environmental and economic
needs, but no single land-use should predominate to
ensure environmental health and human welfare.
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With
millions facing food shortages, Malawi looks for long-term
solutions
Poor soil fertility is a major contributor to the
low grain yields precipitating the recent serious
food crisis in Malawi. Expensive fertilizers are not
an option for most farmers in a country where 65%
live on less than a dollar a day. Over the past decade
the World Agroforestry Centre has been developing
and promoting the use of nitrogen-fixing trees in
fallows to provide vital crop nitrogen. Farmers who
have been using this system have been able to avoid
famine. The cost of training and equipping one family
to practise agroforestry is only USD 2.50 and it can
mean the difference between life and death. It is
estimated that roughly 40 percent of Malawi’s farmers
could benefit from these programmes.
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And
so it grows Local ‘change teams’ expanding agroforestry
practices in southern Africa
The backdrop for agroforestry research and development
in much of southern Africa is a combination of difficult
- but by no means insurmountable - realities. Rural
poverty has been rising dramatically. Looming periods
of famine have increased political pressure for providing
food aid in the region. Never has there been a greater
need to assist rural people build their own capacity
to deal with these hardships and take charge of sustainable
development.
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Landcare
in Africa
Landcare is a revolution in land management that began
in Australia, expanded into the Philippines and is
now being tested under African conditions. It is both
a development strategy and a farmer-led social movement.
It depends on the use of appropriate technologies,
effective local community groups and partnerships
with governments and NGOs. Landcare groups are self-managed
and focus on land management issues that the group
itself considers locally important. Governments and
NGOs play a supplementary supportive role, but the
key initiative lies at the local community level.
The World Agroforestry Centre was closely involved
with Landcare in the Philippines and is now testing
the feasibility of the Landcare approach with communities
in Uganda and Ethiopia.
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Testing
the clean development mechanism in western Kenya
A worldwide system of trading in carbon credits could
provide a whole new way to value agroforestry systems.
Under the 1997 Kyoto protocol industrialized countries
that were unable to meet targets to reduce their own
greenhouse gas emissions were permitted to invest
in projects in developing countries that sequestered
carbon. The World Agroforestry Centre is working with
the Kenya government and smallholder farmers in a
pilot study to test the practicalities of implementing
such development projects. Fast-growing trees can
provide soil replenishment and farm income while increasing
carbon stores both above ground and in soil organic
matter. Understanding the synergies that can result
from such agroforestry systems will help direct future
negotiations in setting up development projects with
multiple benefits to partners across the world.
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Benefiting
from the world’s best student partnerships help build
agroforestry research
The World Agroforestry Centre has always supported
student trainees from its partner institutions, and
this investment has had a huge impact on building
the science of agroforestry and the capacities of
its partner institutions. Each year approximately
20-30 trainees are supported to conduct their thesis
research at the Centre’s project sites. One such site
is the Lake Victoria project where seven trainees
are working on problems of land degradation and watershed
management. Their research projects have had a unique
and valuable impact on the progress of this important
project to restore the health of the world’s second
largest freshwater lake.
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Capitalizing
on natural capital farmers in the Congo Basin nurture
forest resources on their farmland
The Congo basin has a wealth of natural biodiversity,
but its forests are being destroyed at an alarming
rate while its people suffer from widespread poverty
and a host of development problems. The World Agroforestry
Centre is helping to reduce poverty and slow deforestation
by developing alternative sources of income from the
forests. Working with local farmers, researchers are
identifying the most valuable indigenous fruit tree
species previously only found in the forests, then
learning how to domesticate, cultivate and market
them. This provides the basis for building profitable
agroforests on farms, and reducing deforestation.
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