In Kenya, farmers see early rewards from adding legumes and trees to their farms

Jane Achieng displays bean varieties at Piny Oyie market at the Suna West site, Kenya. Photo by Danyell Odhiambo/ICRAF
Jane Achieng displays bean varieties at Piny Oyie market at the Suna West site, Kenya. Photo by Danyell Odhiambo/ICRAF

Less than a year after supplying farmers with legume seeds and fertilizer tree seedlings, the Legume CHOICE project team caught up with farmers and traders in Kisii and Migori counties of Kenya. The farmers were already enjoying the benefits and were keen to scale up.

Legume crops like beans and peas (known collectively as pulses when dry) are a versatile and affordable source of protein and other important nutrients. A mainstay of vegetarian diets, legumes play a critical role in meeting the protein needs of people who cannot access animal proteins such as meat and eggs. Read more. . .

Private companies partner with small producers to create sustainable supply chains of the future

Leveraging their buying power and financial resources, companies are working to create the sustainable supply chains we need in a changing climate. Ones in which farmers and companies prosper together. Where farmers will produce more using ecologically sound practices, and earn decent incomes for their production.

An estimated half a billion smallholder farmers produce 70% of the world’s raw materials and are the pillar of the food industry. Their sustainability is tied together with that of the companies—large and small— that buy this produce, process and market foods and natural products. Read more. . .

‘Don’t throw money at farmers’, and other lessons in sustainable multi-functional agriculture

To overcome poverty, hunger and malnutrition as well as their close bedfellow environmental degradation, we would all do well to heed the dozen principles discussed in a new article by Roger B. Leakey. Instead of giving farmers cash handouts, for instance, we would empower them with skills and knowledge. And instead of telling them what to do, we would ask them what it was they needed.

The 12 principles are distilled from the operations of a long-term, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)-led project in Cameroon, West Africa. Initiated in 1998, the project revolves around training communities in agroforestry for the rehabilitation of degraded land, and participatory domestication and commercialization of fruits and nuts from indigenous trees. The project won the prestigious Equator prize in 2012.Read more. . .

Kenya’s southwest Mau and Vietnam’s highland regions set to become models in sustainable landscape management

Looking out over tea fields to the Mau Forest. Photo courtesy of BBC World Service: One Planet via Flik. http://bit.ly/1jM61cW
Looking out over tea fields to the Mau Forest. Photo courtesy of BBC World Service: One Planet via Flik. http://bit.ly/1jM61cW

A new initiative launched on 28 February 2014 will be carry out projects in Kenya and Vietnam, projects whose success could serve as an example for integrated and sustainable land and water management for productive landscapes.

The initiative, called the Sustainable Land and Water Program, will seek to address the joint challenges associated with water, erosion, land, climate and food security. The two project areas are the tea-growing Southwest Mau Forest region of Kenya and the coffee-growing Central highlands of Vietnam. These were selected because they are important for commodity production, but they also provide critically important environmental services beyond their immediate boundaries.Read more. . .

Innovations for organized and profitable produce markets: The Lake Kivu Pilot Learning Site

Alice Mukamana (R) and Claudine Uwase adding value to potatoes by washing, grading and packing them at Josephine Mukankusi’s house in Rwanda. Photo by Pascal Habumugisha.
Alice Mukamana (R) and Claudine Uwase adding value to potatoes by washing, grading and packing them at Josephine Mukankusi’s washing station in Rwanda. Photo by Pascal Habumugisha.

By Rebecca Selvarajah

Two new articles in the African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics highlight the role of the ‘Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D)’ approach in Africa. The approach integrates markets and innovation platforms (IPs).

FARA, the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, commissioned a pilot study to understand the role of markets and marketing systems in African agriculture. The study also sought to test the effectiveness of  the Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D)  approach and its ‘innovation platforms’ as a strategy for poverty alleviation.Read more. . .

Unity is strength in the marketing of smallholder farm produce

Delivering Allanblackia seeds to a collection centre in Tanzania. Photo by Charlie Pye-Smith
Delivering Allanblackia seeds to a collection centre in Tanzania. Photo by Charlie Pye-Smith/ICRAF via Flikr

Farmers producing small quantities of a particular crop or tree product face the challenge of selling it at fair prices, and one effective way to improve matters is ‘collective action’ for marketing. If done right, much can be gained in terms of increased income and food security when smallholder farmers come together and pool their harvest, selling it in bulk.

Nonetheless, collective action in marketing, particularly for small-scale farmers in Africa, is not as simple as it seems at first glance, as a new article shows. The review, published in the journal Current Opinions on Environmental Sustainability, synthesizes some of the lessons learned over two decades of implementing collective action, and provides some pointers for success.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. . .

New technologies for cocoa farming pull youth, secure chocolate

Refreshing cocoa farms can attract youth
Refreshing cocoa orchards can attract youth to farming

“In one of our project sites in Cote d’Ivoire, a university graduate recently went back to his family’s cocoa farm of his own accord,” Christophe Kouamé said, to make the point that new technologies can make farming more appealing to young people.

The senior scientist with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and manager of the public-private partnership called Vision for Change was speaking at an ICRAF side event at the Africa Agriculture Science Week (AASW6) in Accra, a city with a large interchange (roundabout) named after Tete Kwashi, the man who first introduced cocoa in Ghana in 1879. Read more. . .

Grafted cocoa wows farmers and visitors at Petit Bondoukou

Around two years ago when the Vision for Change cocoa project opened up a centre in Petit Bondoukou village in Côte d’Ivoire, local farmers were invited to participate in field trials aimed at sustainably improving cocoa yields. Mr Koume Koume was among the first farmers to sign up. Today, his decision to offer up a portion of his cocoa farm for demonstration trials under the project is paying off.

Mr Kouame Koume is involved in cocoa trials at Petit Bondoukou village, as part of the Vision for Change project. Photo: Claude Adjehi/ICRAF
Mr Kouame Koume is involved in cocoa trials at Petit Bondoukou village, as part of the Vision for Change project. Photo: ICRAF/CDI

The quarter-hectare section of Koume’s farm in which old and under-producing cocoa trees were grafted with a high-yielding variety has become the talk of the village. Visitors and passers-by marvel at the large, heavy cocoa pods on trees grafted just 18 months ago.  And the 40 year-old father of six says he is glad he chose to join the cocoa trials back in October 2010. Read more. . .

Litchi: A new yet old fruit tree for Kenya

Litchi tree in fruit in Reunion - Photo by Parveen Anjarwalla/ICRAF
Litchi tree in fruit in Reunion – Photo by Parveen Anjarwalla/ICRAF

Mangoes, when in season, are available in copious amounts and varieties all over Kenya.

But litchi, another exotic tree fruit, is always scarce. Imported and found exclusively in the most upmarket greengrocers and specialty stores in Nairobi, litchi’s retail price of 10-18 dollars a kilo keeps it firmly out of the reach of the majority. But this year a seed has been sown that could see the local cultivation and vulgarization of litchi begin in Kenya. Read more. . .