During a high level panel on sustainable agriculture held at the European Development Days 2012, experts said that world hunger has diminished worldwide, but it will only continue to do so if farmers are trained to implement agro-ecology principles using such techniques as agroforestry, conservation agriculture and the proper application of fertiliser.
Scientists both in the academic community and in the field stressed the need to invest in farming activities and to promote a sustainable intensification of agriculture.
“You have to produce more yields with fewer chemical products like fertilisers, in a sustainable way. This is the challenge,” Sir Gordon Conway, a Professor of International Development at Imperial College London and author of the book “One billion hungry. Can we feed the world?”, said during a recent Brussels presentation.
Patrick Worms, a senior science policy adviser at the World Agroforestry Centre, stressed that training small-scale farmers in agro-ecological techniques is the best response to world hunger. Twice as much food will need to be produced in Africa by 2050 to avoid widespread starvation amongst an expected population of 1,8 billion, a report from the World Agroforestry Centre says.
Drawing lessons from the World Agroforestry Centre’s thirty years of experience in Africa, Worms advised to build rural development from the grassroots by using technologies that are high performance, yet easy and cheap to implement.
“Smallholders don’t need tractors. What we do need is for farmers to learn how to work with the trees in their environment,” he said.
The World Agroforestry Centre is promoting Evergreen Agriculture, a set of principles that combine agroforestry with conservation agriculture that have already transformed African regions as diverse as Niger, the Sahel, the hillsides of Cameroon, and Malawi. This innovation has been rolled out across the region with the support of the European Commission, notably through a 2 million Euro project to scale up conservation agriculture with trees in eastern and southern Africa.
When fertiliser trees are introduced on crop land, they improve soil fertility by drawing nitrogen from the air and transferring it to the soil through their roots and leaf litter. In Malawi, a survey of over 10 000 farmers conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture showed that less than 10% of the farmers had grown fertiliser trees in the past. In that country, programmes funded by various European donors have trained trainers and have established over 300 on-farm demonstration plots in order to address the knowledge gap and introduce fertiliser trees. This system, says Worms, is the most appropriate response to reduce hunger. “This can treble cereal yields, all without expensive fertilisers,” he said.
“However, before trying something new, farmers need to see it work because if they make a mistake, it can mean playing with the lives of their children,” Worms explained.
Agroforestry has been practiced on the African continent for centuries, but higher population densities means that it must be improved. Evergreen Agriculture has developed a more systematic approach. “In Niger, farmer-managed natural regeneration of fertiliser trees has transformed millions of hectares of barren land into productive landscapes,” Worms said.
In the western highlands of Cameroon, the World Agroforestry Centre works with more than 200 farmer groups under the day-to-day supervision of 17 farmer-managed Rural Resources Centres (RRCs). These groups teach modern techniques, such as grafting, to help farmers select and domesticate trees they particularly like. They can thus multiply these trees and open a nursery business. The newly domesticated trees provide huge gains in quality and quantity compared to their wild cousins. The RRCs act as relay organisations and provide training and demonstrations. They diffuse new technologies, skills and knowledge, in association with national and international research institutes, such as the University of Ghent in Belgium.
Since the introduction of agroforestry in Malawi, the yield of maize grown under Faidherbia trees has increased by up to 280%, while in Niger, more than 4,8 million hectares of Faidherbia-dominated agro-forests enhance millet and sorghum production in the Zinder region. This allows Zinder’s poor Kantché district to export up to 60 000 tons of cereal in good years. It even allows the district to export something in bad years, Worms explained. “Growing trees makes land more resilient to drought, and in the worst times, some of the trees can be sold as timber. They act as an insurance policy,” he added.
Agro-forests have other benefits. “Fruits provide micronutrients, leaves and pods provide fodder for livestock, branches provide cooking fuel, and deep roots can draw moisture up even in harsh droughts,” Worms explained.
Agro-ecology techniques like agroforestry are becoming recognised as the powerful tools they are, he said. The World Agroforestry Centre is operating in partnership with IFAD, the FAO, many bilateral donors and foundations, and the EU.
Often, what is needed is not just funding, Worms said. “These technologies are social, in the sense that they become implemented when farmers want them and social and legal norms encourage them.” In some states, farmers are supposed to be penalised for having trees on their land – often, a legacy of obsolete legal systems. Governments and donors are aware of this issue. “In Burkina Faso, Malawi and Kenya, the EC funded a major World Agroforestry Centre initiative to harmonize policy for environmental stewardship and rural development,” Worms continued.
Drawing examples from both dry lands in the Sahel and more humid zones such as those found in Cameroon, Worms said success sprang from an ongoing dialogue between scientists and small scale farmers. “Farmers are our true experts,” he said. His conclusion is optimistic. “Yes, we can feed nine billion people on this planet, but only if agro-ecological principles are applied.”
Professor Sir Gordon Conway is also all in favour of agro-ecological principles but is slightly less optimistic. “To fight world hunger, we need not only to apply the existing technology, but also to invent new ones.”
For a full video presentation by Sir Gordon Conway of his book “One Billion Hungry: Can we feed the world?” watch this link (EC members only). For Professor Sir Gordon Conway’s PDF presentation, visit this link (EC members only).
For more information on the World Agroforestry Centre, check this link.
For more information on EC contribution to the World Agroforestry Centre, please check this link (EC members only).
This collaborative piece was drafted with input from Patrick Worms, Francis Urena-Lara and Raymond Lataste with support from the Capacity4dev Team. Photo credit: T. Samson/CIMMYT | CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
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