Frank Place

Natural resources management in African agriculture: understanding and improving current practices.

This text consists of selected, edited and revised papers from a workshop held at ICRAF in July 2000. It synthesizes existing information on the adoption of natural resource management investments and strategies (such as soil fertility improvements or erosion control) for agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. It also critically examines analytical methods and generates research and policy recommendations.

The African Millennium Villages

We describe the concept, strategy, and initial results of the Millennium Villages Project and implications regarding sustainability and scalability. Our underlying hypothesis is that the interacting crises of agriculture, health, and infrastructure in rural Africa can be overcome through targeted public-sector investments to raise rural productivity and, thereby, to increased private-sector saving and investments. This is carried out by empowering impoverished communities with science-based interventions. Seventy-eight Millennium Villages have been initiated in 12 sites in 10 African countries, each representing a major agroecological zone. In early results, the research villages in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Malawi have reduced malaria prevalence, met caloric requirements, generated crop surpluses, enabled school feeding programs, and provided cash earnings for farm families.

Population Pressure, Land Tenure, and Tree Resource Management in Uganda

This study uses aerial photographs and survey data from sixty four parishes in east-central Uganda to identify the factors affecting conversion of woodlands and traditional grazing areas to agriculture. Regression analysis shows that customary land tenure institutions, greater population pressure and poor access to markets are significant causes of land conversion to agriculture, and hence to loss of trees. Private ownership of converted land promotes greater integration of trees and crops and leads to the highest density of trees on agricultural land. Given that continuing population growth will lead to further land conversion to agriculture, the best prospect for maintaining or increasing tree populations lies with agroforestry on cultivated land.

Land Tenure Systems and Their Impacts on Agricultural Investments and Productivity in Uganda

This article provides an empirical analysis of the impact of different tenure systems (mailo, customary, and public land) on agricultural investment and productivity in central Uganda. A major hypothesis tested is that land investments and practices may have both economic and tenure security implications. The results indicate that coffee planting is used by farmers to enhance tenure security, while fallowing is practised to a greater extent by farmers on more secure holdings. This supports the notion that farmers consider tenure implications when making investments and that different tenure systems do not inhibit the promotion of tree-planting investment. Tenure had no impact on the productivity of crop farming.

The challenge of stimulating adoption of improved natural resource management practices in African agriculture.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) faces a formidable challenge. Most rural Africans remain poor and food-insecure in the aftermath of widespread macroeconomic, political and sectoral reforms that have largely failed to stimulate significant agricultural productivity improvements. Meanwhile, the extensive margin of new arable land available to bring into cultivation, so as to satisfy population-driven increases in food demand, is rapidly being exhausted across most of the continent. There are thus intense pressures for agricultural intensification so as to improve factor productivity without expanding the area under cultivation. Sustainable agricultural intensification requires prudent long-term management of the natural resource base on which agriculture fundamentally depends. A wide range of traditional and modern techniques1 exist for effective natural resource management (NRM). None the less, degradation of soils and other natural resources proceeds at a high rate in much of the continent, reflecting in large measure disturbingly low rates of use of sustainable NRM strategies, especially among the poorer subpopulations of smallholder producers. The challenge of improving smallholder NRM practices lies at the heart of the broader imperative for sustainable agricultural intensification in Africa today, and thus of the universal objective of reducing poverty and vulnerability on a continent in which most people today are employed in agriculture and poverty remains most acute in the countryside. Improved NRM is every bit as much about increasing productivity and incomes for the current generation as it is about preserving the quality of resources to safeguard the livelihoods of future generations. This volume provides an unprecedented synthesis of findings from across the continent. In drawing together lessons learned from the full range of African agroecosystems and economic and cultural contexts, several empirical regularities

Agricultural success from Africa: the case of fertilizer tree systems in southern Africa (Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe)

In response to the declining soil fertility in southern Africa and the negative effects that this leads to, such as food insecurity besides other developmental challenges, fertilizer tree systems (FTS) were developed as technological innovation to help smallholder farmers to build soil organic matter and fertility in a sustainable manner. In this paper, we trace the historical background and highlight the developmental phases and outcomes of the technology. The synthesis shows that FTS are inexpensive technologies that significantly raise crop yields, reduce food insecurity and enhance environmental services and resilience of agro-ecologies. Many of the achievements recorded with FTS can be traced to some key factors: the availability of a suite of technological options that are appropriate in a range of different household and ecological circumstances, partnership between multiple institutions and disciplines in the development of the technology, active encouragement of farmer innovations in the adaptation process and proactive engagement of several consortia of partner institutions to scale up the technology in farming communities. It is recommended that smallholder farmers would benefit if rural development planners emphasize the merits of different fertility replenishment approaches and taking advantage of the synergy between FTS and mineral fertilizers rather than focusing on ‘organic vs. inorganic’ debates.

Policy Support for Large-Scale Adoption of Agroforestry Practices: Experience from Africa and Asia

Government policies play an important role in facilitating agroforestry promotion. Based on a set of five agroforestry practices that are adopted at a significant scale in different countries of Africa and Asia, we analyze the development path of the different practices and examine how they evolved into widely practiced systems, with the focus on the specific role that government policies had in facilitating such developments. The selected practices were regenerated parklands in Niger, cashew in Ghana, timber planting in India, smallholder fruit production in Kenya, and agroforests in Indonesia. Additionally, major roles of other key actors, such as the private sector, are examined in the light of the current state of knowledge on the policy implications on private sector investments in this field. The study reveals that both government and non-state actors played different roles to encourage the spread of agroforestry. In many cases, the spread of agroforestry was triggered when existing or new policies created market opportunities and increased the economic rationale for adopting given agroforestry systems. Widespread adoption of agroforestry is strongly influenced by the policy and institutional context within which agroforestry is disseminated. Agroforestry was found to be increasingly embedded into national development programs as evidence of its benefits became better known, although a significant number of policy measures disadvantage agroforestry. The study concludes that the dissemination of agroforestry at the farm level should be complemented with conducive policy, institutional and economic incentives. In addition, to ensure a sustained adoption of agroforestry over the long term, policy and dissemination questions will have to be researched with the same vigor that biophysical and farmer levels questions are being investigated.

Investing in trees and landscape restoration in Africa - what, when and how

Reforestation measures for degraded lands, strategies for the sustainable management of forest resources, and agroforestry practices that incorporate trees into farming systems are increasingly demonstrating their promise for producing commercialized tree products. Although the level of investment so far has remained modest, the challenge is to find ways to scale up promising investments in a way that will have a clear impact at the landscape level. These types of investments can help achieve the triple wins of climate-smart agriculture: increased incomes and yields, climate change adaptation and greenhouse gas mitigation.Market trends are promising for a wide range of tree-based technologies, including tropical fruits, cashews, honey, timber and wood products, lipids, gums and resins, tree crops, and agroforestry systems. In many cases, African entrepreneurs, farmers, civil society, and governments have responded dynamically to the widespread challenge of land degradation. The continent is dotted with landscapes where production of trees on farms and in managed forests has grown dramatically to meet market and subsistence needs; sustainable agricultural practices and revegetation have restored soils and watersheds; and key conservation areas are being protected. However, this is not happening at the scale required by societal needs in Africa. In part, this is due to a lack of strategic cooperation and coordination between private sector investors and land managers (who are focused on realizing profitable opportunities and meeting their own needs) and public and civil society actors (who are focused on restoring forest cover and ecosystem services). Such coordination is only possible when the biophysical potential for landscape restoration, private sector investment opportunity and incentives, and societal demand for multiple benefits converge. Much can be learned from examples of large-scale landscape restoration in Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger, Tanzania, and Zambia, and the variable roles of the private sector, farmers, government, and civil society in supporting and undertaking investment.

Emerging Development of Agriculture in East Africa

This chapter attempts to provide better understanding of the impacts of demonstrations or training of improved lowland rice management practices on its diffusion and rice yields by using the case of the JICA program in Eastern Uganda. The most important finding of this study is that lowland rice yield can be extremely high in Uganda if basic production practices, such as bunding, leveling, and straight row planting, are adopted along with the adoption of modern rice varieties and the use of simple irrigation systems, even if chemical fertilizer is not applied. The major challenge is how to disseminate such a package of improved production practices to farmers. According to our analysis, the intensity of training participation is the key to the adoption of such practices. It was also found that training participation decreases as the distance from the demonstration plot increases.

Assessment of Professional Training Programmes in International Agricultural Research Institutions: The Case of ICRAF.

Abstract The following survey was undertaken in 2005 to assess the effectiveness of professional training activities in international agricultural research organizations that were undertaken between 1999 and 2002 at ICRAF (International Centre for Research in Agroforestry), now World Agroforestry Centre, Nairobi. Trainees were randomly selected from various professional fields in the agroforestry domain. Survey questionnaires and telephone interviews were adopted. Descriptive statistics, logit regression, cross-tabulations and bi-plot analysis were used to analyze the data. The Kirkpatricks training evaluation theory provided the methodological framework for the study. Male participants were more educated and had longer average professional experience than females. Trainees had good recollection and learning of various aspects of the training. There was high potential for skill transfer and practical implementation of training skills among all trainees, but lack of resources was a major limitation. Female workers faced more constraints during workplace implementation of skills than male workers. The study has practical implications for current and future design and evaluation of training in agricultural domains. The work also contributes to knowledge building in training evaluation within agricultural institutions in Africa, which is poorly documented or lacking in certain specific settings. The paper is original because scientific evaluation of training activities in agricultural practice in Africa is rarely or poorly documented, thus adding value to agricultural research.