The need for transformation of food and agriculture systems to be aligned with sustainable development goals is widely acknowledged. Evidence from many parts of the world shows that agroecology, which considers the social and environmental performance of agricultural systems along with economic aspects, is helping farmers transition to sustainable agricultural systems. However, there are demands from national, regional and international food and agriculture planners and funders for evidence that agroecology can work at scale. Providing that evidence requires understanding how farmers use environmental factors when selecting agricultural practices, which is poorly documented. This study contributes to filling this gap by reporting how environmental factors are important in farmers’ decisions related to adopting agroecological practices. Qualitative and quantitative data from 239 key informants, a survey of 5025 farms, 85 focus group discussions with farmers and five participatory cross-benefit analyses in eleven case studies across eight African countries were used. We show that farmers use information on and perceptions of a wide range of environmental variables and processes when assessing the usefulness of agroecological practices. In most cases, farmers cited environmental factors more frequently than economic reasons for choosing to use agroecological practices. Most of the environmental factors articulated by farmers were components of the local or farm environment that were connected to their livelihood, including aspects of soils, water, microclimate, pests and diseases, other animals, and vegetation. Intrinsic and relational environmental values such as conservation of biodiversity, long-term maintenance of land quality and aesthetics were also important. These findings show first that providing data on environmental roles of agroecology will always be challenging because of the breadth of factors that are important. Secondly, viability or usefulness of an agroecological practice is not a characteristic of the practice alone, but also of the context in which it is used. Third, impact analyses of agroecological interventions cannot be confined to consideration of a few globally comparative indicators but need to include the context specific environmental factors that farmers care about.
Tag: agricultural practices
Learning from agrarian dynamics to tailor community-led forest restoration in the Tshopo province, Democratic Republic of the Congo
The strategies and efficacy of forest restoration initiatives in Central Africa are poorly documented. To this end, we examined the usefulness of a holistic methodology (combining agricultural diagnosis with forestry measurement) to explain the results of a forest restoration project in Tshopo Province in the DRC. To do this, an initial analysis based on the agrarian diagnostic structure was carried out and linked to project monitoring data – interviews with all beneficiaries who had planted trees (n=89) and measurements in their fields (planting sites, species planted and mortality rates 12 months after planting). The study shows that the uptake and results of the forest restoration initiative can be largely explained by the diversity of farming systems. Finally, our diagnostic method offers interesting rationales for forest restoration interventions in Central Africa, in order to adapt project objectives to the local context and diversity of farming systems, and ultimately to improve project performance.
Understanding gender dimensions of agriculture and climate change in smallholder farming communities
In Uganda, Ghana and Bangladesh, participatory tools were used for a socio-economic and gender analysis of three topics: climate-smart agriculture (CSA), climate analogue approaches, and climate and weather forecasting. Policy and programme-relevant results were obtained. Smallholders are changing agricultural practices due to observations of climatic and environmental change. Women appear to be less adaptive because of financial or resource constraints, because of male domination in receiving information and extension services and because available adaptation strategies tend to create higher labour loads for women. The climate analogue approach (identifying places resembling your future climate so as to identify potential adaptations) is a promising tool for increasing farmer-to-farmer learning, where a high degree of climatic variability means that analogue villages that have successfully adopted new CSA practices exist nearby. Institutional issues related to forecast production limit their credibility and salience, particularly in terms of women’s ability to access and understand them. The participatory tools used in this study provided some insights into women’s adaptive capacity in the villages studied, but not to the depth necessary to address women’s specific vulnerabilities in CSA programmes. Further research is necessary to move the discourse related to gender and climate change beyond the conceptualization of women as a homogenously vulnerable group in CSA programmes
Assessing research impact on poverty: the importance of farmers’ perspectives
In this paper we provide evidence to show that farmers’ perspectives on poverty processes and outcomes are critical in the early stages of evaluating impact of agricultural research on poverty. We summarize lessons learned from farmer impact assessment workshops held in five African locations, covering three agro-ecological zones and five different agroforestry and livestock technologies arising from collaborative national–international agricultural research. Poverty alleviation is a process that needs to be understood before impact can be measured. Workshops such as those we describe can help researchers to identify farmers’ different ways of managing and using a technology and likely effects, unanticipated impacts, major impacts to pursue in more quantitative studies, the primary links between agricultural technology and poverty, and key conditioning factors affecting adoption and impact that can be used to stratify samples in more formal analyses. Farmer workshops inform other qualitative and quantitative impact assessment methods. We discuss the linkage of farmer-derived information with GIS-based approaches that allow more complete specification of recommendation domains and broader-scale measurement of impact.
Looking back to look ahead: insight into the effectiveness and efficiency of selected advisory approaches in the dissemination of agricultural technologies indicative of Conservation Agriculture with Trees in Machakos County, Kenya
Sub-Saharan Africa is facing a challenge of low agricultural productivity, which threatens the ability to achieve food security for the continent’s growing population. The low productivity has been attributed to a number of factors including climate variability and low soil fertility. Agricultural practices such as Evergreen Agriculture show promise in improving soil fertility and production in a sustainable way. One form of Evergreen Agriculture is Conservation Agriculture with Trees (CAWT), which combines the principles of Conservation Agriculture with tree-crop intercropping. The promotion of complex agricultural practices such as CAWT requires agricultural advisory approaches that are both effective and efficient. Effective in their ability to increase diversity of crop enterprises, productivity of staple crops and adoption of promoted relevant practices. Advisory approaches are also considered effective if they provide useful information and build social networks in the community. The approaches also need to be efficient, that is, be able to mobilize the community and provide training in a costand- time appropriate fashion.
Agricultural intensification, deforestation and the environment: assessing tradeoffs in Sumatra, Indonesia
The conditions necessary for increased productivity of agroforestry and other land uses to jointly reduce poverty and deforestation are not well understood. The global Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) Programme was founded to provide scientific insights and workable innovations for the simultaneous pursuit of precisely these two goals: poverty reduction and rain forest conservation in the tropics. This chapter summarizes results from study sites on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, which were chosen to represent the lowland humid tropical forest zone in Asia for the global ASB project.