THIRD WORLD NETWORK INFORMATION SERVICE ON SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
Dear Friends and Colleagues
African Farmers Lead the Way in Climate-Resilient Agroecology
In 2015, the Oakland Institute released 33 case studies providing irrefutable evidence of the tremendous success of agroecological agriculture across the African continent in the face of climate change, hunger, and poverty. Agroecological projects have restored degraded land and saved scarce water resources while increasing food production, and improving farmers’ livelihoods and resilience.
For example, in Kenya, 200,000 farmers practising ecological agriculture and feeding over one million people, use up to 90% less water than in conventional agriculture and 50-100% fewer purchased fertilizers. Over 20 years from the 1980s, the Keita Rural Development Project in Niger planted 18 million trees. The surface under woodlands increased by 300% while shrubby steppes and sand dunes decreased by 30%. In Timbuktu, Mali, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has produced yields of 9 tons of rice per hectare, more than double those of conventional methods, while saving water and other inputs.
A common factor in the success stories is that the farmers, including many women, are in the driver’s seat of their own development. They are the local innovators. Another factor is giving up reliance on external agricultural inputs such as commercial seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and chemical pesticides. The main inputs required for agroecology are people’s own energy and common sense, shared knowledge, and respect for and a sound use of natural resources.
The case studies debunk the myth that Africa needs a Green Revolution with synthetic fertilisers and genetically modified crops. Instead of spending billions of dollars every year to subsidize fertilizers and pesticides for their farmers, African governments are urged to "make the only reasonable choice: to give the continent a leading role in the way out of world hunger and corporate exploitation and move to a sustainable and climate-friendly way to produce food for all".
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AGROECOLOGY IN AFRICA: MITIGATION THE OLD NEW WAY
Frederic Mousseau, Oakland Institute
http://www.ipsnews.net/2016/01/agroecology-in-africa-mitigation-the-old-new-way/
Millions of African farmers don’t need to adapt to climate change. They have done that already.
Like many others across the continent, indigenous communities in Ethiopia’s Gamo Highlandsare well prepared against climate variations. The high biodiversity, which forms the basis of their traditional enset-based agricultural systems, allows them to easily adjust their farming practices, including the crops they grow, to climate variations.
People in Gamo are also used to managing their environment and natural resources in sound and sustainable ways, rooted in ancestral knowledge and customs, which makes them resilient to floods or droughts. Although African indigenous systems are often perceived as backward by central governments, they have a lot of learning to offer to the rest of the world when contemplating the challenges of climate change and food insecurity.
Often building on such indigenous knowledge, farmers all over the African continent have assembled a tremendous mass of successful experiences and innovations in agriculture. These efforts have steadily been developed over the past few decades following the droughts that impacted many countries in the 1970s and 1980s.
In Kenya, the system of biointensive agriculturehas been designed over the past thirty years to help smallholders grow the most food on the least land and with the least water. 200,000 Kenyan farmers, feeding over one million people, have now switched to biointensive agriculture, which allows them to use up to 90 per cent less water than in conventional agriculture and 50 to 100 per cent fewer purchased fertilizers, thanks to a set of agroecological practices that provide higher soil organic matter levels, near continuous crop soil coverage, and adequate fertility for root and plant health.
The Sahel region, bordering the Sahara Desert, is renowned for its harsh environment and the threat of desertification. What is less known is the tremendous success of the actions undertaken to curb desert encroachment, restore lands, and farmers’ livelihoods.
Started in the 1980s, the Keita Rural Development Project in Niger took some twenty years to restore ecological balance and drastically improve the agrarian economy of the area. During the period, 18 million trees were planted, the surface under woodlands increased by 300 per cent, whereas shrubby steppes and sand dunes decreased by 30 per cent. In the meantime, agricultural land was expanded by about 80 per cent.
All over the region, a multitude of projects have used agroecological solutions to restore degraded land and spare scarce water resources while at the same time increasing food production, and improving farmers’ livelihoods and resilience. In Timbuktu, Mali, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has reached impressive results, with yields of 9 tons of rice per hectare, more than double of conventional methods, while saving water and other inputs. In Burkina Faso, soil and water conservation techniques, including a modernized version of traditional planting pitszai have been highly successful to rehabilitate degraded soils and boost food production and incomes.
Southern African countries have been struggling with recurrent droughts resulting in major failures in corn crops, the main staple cereal in the region. Over the years, farmers and governments have developed a wide variety of agroecological solutions to prevent food crises and foster their resilience to climatic shocks. The common approach in all these responses has been to depart from the conventional monocropping of corn, which is highly vulnerable to climate shocks while it is also very costly and demanding in purchased inputs such as hybrid seeds and fertilizers. Successful sustainable and affordable solutions include managing and harvesting rain water, expanding conservationand regenerative farming, promoting the production and consumption of cassavaand other tuber crops, diversifying production, and integrating crops with fertilizer treesand nitrogen fixating leguminousplants.
The enumeration could go on. The few examples cited above all come from a series of 33 case studiesreleased recently by the Oakland Institute. The series sheds light on the tremendous success of agroecological agriculture across the African continent in the face of climate change, hunger, and poverty.
These success stories are just a sample of what Africans are already doing to adapt to climate variations while preserving their natural resources, improving their livelihoods and their food supply. One thing they have in common is that they have farmers, including many women farmers, in the driver’s seat of their own development. Millions of farmers who practice agroecology across the continent are local innovators who experiment to find the best solutions in relation to water availability, soil characteristics, landscapes, cultures, food habits, and biodiversity.
Another common feature is that they depart from the reliance on external agricultural inputs such as commercial seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and chemical pesticides, on which is based the so-called conventional agriculture. The main inputs required for agroecology are people’s own energy and common sense, shared knowledge, and of course respect for and a sound use of natural resources.
Why are these success stories mostly untold, is a fair question to ask. They are largely buried under the rhetoric of a development discourse based on a destructive cocktail of ignorance, greed, and neocolonialism. Since the 2008 food price crisis, we have been told over and over that Africa needs foreign investors in agriculture to ‘develop’ the continent; that Africa needs a Green Revolution, more synthetic fertilizers, and genetically modified crops in order to meet the challenges of hunger and poverty. The agroecology case studies debunk these myths.
Evidence is there, with irrefutable facts and figures, that millions of Africans have already designed their own solutions, for their own benefits. They have successfully adapted to both the unsustainable agricultural systems inherited from the colonial times, and to the present challenges of climate change and environmental degradation. Unfortunately, a majority of African governments, with encouragement from donor countries, focus most of their efforts and resources to subsidize and encourage a model of agriculture, largely reliant on the expensive commercial agricultural inputs, in particular synthetic fertilizers mainly sold by a handful of Western corporations.
The good news is that an agroecological transition is affordable for African governments. They spend billions of dollars every year to subsidize fertilizers and pesticides for their farmers. In Malawi, the government’s subsidies to agricultural inputs, mostly fertilizers, amount to close to 10 percent of the national budget every year. The evidence that exists, based on the experience of millions of farmers, should prompt African governments to make the only reasonable choice: to give the continent a leading role in the way out of world hunger and corporate exploitation and move to a sustainable and climate-friendly way to produce food for all.