For smallholders, an abundance of opportunities in climate-smart farming

Rose Koech, a farmer in Bomet, Kenya, cuts calliandra shrub for her dairy cattle. She is a member of the East Africa Dairy Development Project. Photo by Sherry
Rose Koech, a farmer in Bomet, Kenya, cuts calliandra shrub for her dairy cattle. She is a member of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project. Photo by Sherry Odeyo/ICRAF

The landscape appears ripe with opportunity for small-scale farmers worldwide, as their contribution towards feeding the world and fuelling development amidst a changing climate is more widely acknowledged.

“That smallholder farmers’ role in food production and natural resource stewardship is recognized as one of the quickest ways to lift over one billion people out of poverty and sustainably nourish a growing world population is an outstanding opportunity in itself. We should not lose sight of this focus,” said Delia Catacutan, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) senior social scientist, gender program coordinator, and Vietnam country representative.

Catacutan said many fresh prospects for the world’s billions of small-scale producers in developing countries are also coming from “trends towards increasingly secure land tenure and property rights; pro-poor food security initiatives; freer trade across national borders; and private-sector investments in smallholder agriculture value chains.”Read more. . .

Resilient landscapes need the involvement of local people

Communities hold a crucial piece of the resilient-landscapes puzzle, say experts.

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Community members have much to offer in the design of resilient landscapes. Photo by Sammy Carsan/ICRAF

Speaking on 17 November at a discussion session titled ‘Building resilient landscapes for food security and sustainable livelihoods,’ Tony Simons, Director-General of World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), advocated for an approach that includes, involves and learns from the custodians of landscapes—the local communities living in them. He said we need to better “understand the needs, resources needed, and opportunity costs of natural resource management,” for resilient, climate smart landscapes.

Simons also discussed carbon markets, which put a price on a tonne of  carbon dioxide (CO2) captured (see Africa’s Biocarbon Experience [PDF]). “Carbon is the most variably priced commodity on earth, from $50 per tonne as firewood, to $100 million per tonne as diamond. We need to move beyond putting a price on carbon, and consider instead the value of trees in the landscape, as providers of essential ecosystem services,” he stated.Read more. . .

Quotes from TEDx Nairobi: The City Rebooted

Viana-TEDx
Professor Virgilio Viana at TEDx Nairobi

The TEDxNairobi event on the theme ‘The City Rebooted” surpassed expectations. A stellar cast of speakers, each provocative and with memorable quotes and moving stories, left audiences inspired and enlightened. World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) hosted the event on 30 October 2013 at its Nairobi Headquarters.

We produce here a small selection of memorable quotes from the event. The full presentations will be curated at TED.com in the coming weeks.Read more. . .

Wake up now to make agriculture sustainable

UNCTAD Trade and Environment Review 2013
UNCTAD Trade and Environment Review 2013

“The world needs a paradigm shift in agricultural development … to an ‘ecological intensification’ approach,” states the UNCTAD Trade and Environment Review 2013 released yesterday (18 September 2013) in Geneva. “The required transformation is much more profound than simply tweaking the existing industrial agricultural system.”

The new report, titled “Wake up before it is too late: Make agriculture truly sustainable now for food security in a changing climate,” is a clarion call for drastic changes to agriculture globally in order to combat hunger and curb further damage to the environment in the face of a changing climate. Read more. . .

Biodegradable seedling bags could grow stronger trees, but can they replace polythene?

Biodegradable (centre) and polythene seedling bags (L&R). Photo by SherryOdeyo/ICRAF
Biodegradable (centre) and polythene seedling bags (L&R). Photo by Sherry Odeyo/ICRAF

Grandma was right to raise her tree seedlings in that broken old gourd; this biodegradable container helped her saplings establish more successfully on the farm.

A new article in the journal Small-scale Forestry confirms the superiority of biodegradable bags over polythene ones in easing a seedling’s transition from the nursery to the farm. Upon transplanting, tree seedlings grown in biodegradable bags established with more vigour, says the article by researchers from the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and partners. The authors note, however, that the adoption of biodegradable seedling bags is not a straightforward proposition for small-scale tree nursery operators in Kenya and similar African countries. Read more. . .

The little-understood indigenous African fruit trees

What do ‘monkey bread’, desert date, and jujube have in common?

For one, they are fruit trees native to sub-Saharan Africa, mostly known only in their immediate localities. They are also united by a severe shortage of research data on their nutritional composition. As researchers from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) discovered, information on the composition of these, and seven similar indigenous African tree species, is “limited and fragmented.” Read more. . .