Technical and institutional innovations to conservation farming and agroforestry: components of sustainable watershed management

Sustainable watershed management is one of the focal issues in the debate about sustainable rural development in the Philippine uplands, where 18 million people eke-out a living on a slope above 30%. Contour hedgerow farming with leguminous trees is viewed as an important agroforestry technology that ensures food security, alleviate poverty, and protect the environment. This paper relates our experiences in participatory approach in developing agroforestry technologies, and facilitation of institution-building for wide-spread adoption and harness support from different service providers, at the ICRAF research site in Claveria, northern Mindanao, Philippines. For several years we focused our efforts in assessing the management strategies to address key technical constraints of the contour hedgerow system. We observed that adoption by farmers is low. The reasons for this include; high labor in establishment and maintenance of the hedgerows, resource competition above and below-ground between the hedgerows and associated crops, limited value-added from the hedgerow prunings, and poor species adaptation. We therefore refocused our efforts toward finding alternative system that will address the technical and social issues of conservation farming. We found that natural vegetative filter strips (NVS) provide simple solution to the technical and social constraints of soil conservation on sloping lands. These are buffer strips that are laid out on the contour in which the natural vegetation is allowed to grow into a thick and protective cover. NVS also provide a foundation for farmers to evolve into complex agroforestry systems with fruit and timber trees. We now see a tremendous surge of adoption of this system. Adoption has been enhanced by the Landcare approach. Landcare is a movement of farmer-led organizations supported by the local government that share knowledge about sustainable and profitable agriculture on sloping lands while conserving natural resources. As NVS evolve to complex agroforestry by planting fruit and timber trees, the role of leguminous trees as nurse trees becomes important. They may provide a favorable micro-environment and increase the availability of nitrogen in the system. But, these roles have not been sufficiently understood or quantified. Our future research aims to understand the prospective positive interactions in these more complex species combination.

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