Agreements for Transition: A Case in Madagascar

Posted on May 17, 2012 by rfriedman

By Dr. Eduard Niesten, Senior Director of the Conservation Stewards Program
Conservation International, in Arlington, VA, USA.

Tromping through rice fields in the dark felt like a surefire way to twist an ankle, but I was thrilled since the existence of these fields meant that our project was working. Verifying this was the purpose of my visit to Vohimary, a village on the edge of the Fandriana – Vondrozo protected area in Madagascar. The people of Vohimary practice tavy, a form of shifting cultivation (what some call slash-and-burn agriculture) that embodies the complex relationship between agriculture and conservation. It can reflect ecological balance and even positive links between natural systems and human practices, but in many settings growing populations and technological change upset that balance. I direct the Conservation Stewards Program (CSP) at Conservation International (CI), which addresses these competing forces using conservation agreements to help resource users like the Vohimary community avoid deforestation and enhance food security by switching to sedentary cultivation on permanent plots.

This switch is difficult for many farmers who lack the tools and resources needed to adopt new production methods and fear the risks of doing so. In return for local community commitments to specific conservation actions, CSP channels funds to address their self-defined needs and priorities. One of the most commonly identified needs is technical assistance to improve agriculture, creating an opportunity to help farmers move from shifting cultivation to sedentary agriculture while working with the community to protect natural habitat and biodiversity.

In Madagascar, CI uses CSP’s conservation agreements to work with local communities who have committed to stop illegal hunting and forest clearing for tavy in specific areas. Important components of these agreements include building small-scale irrigation infrastructure that enables rice production on permanent lowland plots – the plots that threatened my ankles. Protecting forests by managing shifting cultivation helps sustain water supplies that make irrigation and sedentary cultivation possible. Thus, conservation agreements help address the vicious cycle of deforestation and lost water services that (in part) drive shifting cultivation and further forest loss.

I had a particularly memorable conversation with an elderly woman in Vohimary who could not tell me her age; the municipal office that kept birth records burnt down years ago. She described to me how when she was a little girl the forest had extended much further, rains were more regular, and Vohimary was located many kilometers to the east. Water became scarce as her people cleared the hills, and every so often the village would relocate to follow the shrinking forest edge. I was nervous when I asked her what she thought of the conservation agreements, as this clearly was a lady who had seen too much in her long lifetime to sugarcoat the truth. She replied that water infrastructure built under the agreement in return for protecting the forest brought water to the village and the rice fields. Under the agreement, further clearing was not allowed, but would be foolish anyway since the forest keeps the water flowing. She shook her head in disbelief at the thought that anyone would consider further deforestation – she could tell them a thing or two about vicious cycles! I was delighted, as her reply simply but powerfully captured the workings and purpose of the conservation agreement.

How do CSP’s conservation agreements differ from other forms of technical assistance to farmers? They are based on explicit conservation commitments, and linking community investments to performance on these commitments. This empowers farmers to leverage their control over natural resources to attract investment: communities can pursue livelihood objectives by tapping into conservation finance, and conservation funding achieves environmental objectives while advancing socioeconomic development. Our monitoring systems show markedly positive results for biodiversity as well as human wellbeing. However, the most compelling indicator of success might be the fact that year after year our partner communities in Madagascar and elsewhere are keen to renew the conservation agreements.

Photo credit: Bruno Rajaspera
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Making Agriculture “Climate Sustainable”

Posted on May 16, 2012 by rfriedman

New Agriculturist‘s May issue of stories and news pieces focuses on “climate sustainable agriculture.” It looks at how within agriculture, productivity is being increase and farmers’ income improved, all while increasing resilience and mitigating the impacts of climate change. Below is a modified version of one of the articles, specifically focused on the Vi-Agroforestry Western Kenya soil carbon project. This project is the first of its kind, approaching farmland as an important “functioning ecosystem” within the context of the larger landscape, and aiming to scale up the efforts to more areas within Africa.

In early 2012, the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) approved the very first methodology for soil carbon sequestration through the use of sustainable agricultural land management (SALM) practices. The methodology was developed by the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund to enable smallholder farmers in Western Kenya to adopt improved farming techniques, boost productivity, increase their resilience to climate change, and earn carbon credits. Implemented by the NGO Vi Agroforestry in 2007, the pilot project now involves more than 60,000 smallholders farming 45,000 hectares of land in the districts of Kisumu and Kitale.

Kisumu and Kitale are located in the Lake Victoria Basin, which contains an abundance of water resources. Yet the region faces considerable environmental strain from agricultural land degradation, deforested and degraded water catchments, agricultural chemicals, and urban waste. Increasing populations place additional pressure on already degraded soils while extreme poverty and climate change will further compound the challenges in the region.

To address these insecurities, Vi Agroforestry began testing the idea that carbon finance projects could not only improve agricultural practices of farmers in very poor and degraded rural areas, but also add income from carbon credits for  soil carbon. According to Bo Lager, Programme Director with Vi Agroforestry, the project “strives to maintain and restore degraded farmland into a functioning ecosystem in the landscape, which is crucial for resilience to climate change, production of ecosystem services, and food security.” Farmers, primarily growing maize, have since adopted a suite of agricultural practices known to sequester carbon, including manure management, use of cover crops, returning composted crop residues to the fields and planting trees.

Designed as a climate change mitigation project, the improvements in crop yields (expected 50-100% increases), soil health and water holding capacity, and overall agricultural profitability contribute substantially to the resilience of these smallholder farmers. Increased resistance to drought, diversified income from tree products, and reduced dependence on fertilisers and pesticides all add to the adaptive capacity of the farmers. There are also a number of social benefits, including the potential for improved community cohesion, community organisation strength, and new opportunities for women and youth, particularly in the development of tree nurseries.

The first payments will be distributed in 2012 and crediting is planned through to 2029. Bridging the financial barrier to transition practices, these payments are seen as the first step to more permanent implementation of SALM practices that ultimately result in better yields and higher income. Having completed the first phase of the project, project sustainability will depend on the successful transfer of management responsibilities away from Vi Agroforestry staff to community organisations. ” The experience of the project so far has been encouraging,” Larger concludes, “and there is optimism about the opportunity to use the same SALM methodology in other African countries.”

Read the full article online.

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Shifting a Sustainable Development Paradigm

Posted on May 15, 2012 by rfriedman

Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative co-organizers the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) gear up for the United Nations Convention on Sustainable Development Rio+20.  This upcoming meeting is an important one for the Initiative, as it is the ideal setting to bring together all three objectives – supporting people’s livelihoods, producing food, and protecting the environment. When asked in a recent video, where  does agriculture fit into the Rio+20 agenda, Achim Stein, the Executive Director of UNEP, asserted “right in the heart of the agenda.” He goes on to describe farmers as restorers and  managers of ecosystems, but that current incentives push farms towards unsustainable production methods and rapid environmental degradation. For the 20th anniversary of the 1992 UNCSD, Mr. Steiner argues that this meeting is about agreeing on a “shared policy direction,” where both individuals and whole sectors (e.g. agriculture) need to be involved in the next phase of sustainable development. This means shifting away from the paradigm of the last two centuries, which has pushed us beyond the “planetary boundaries,” and decouple further economic growth from impacts on the natural capital base. Last week, we highlighted Bioversity International’s Road to Rio+20 campaign, focused on agrobiodiversity, human nutrition, and conservation. As Rio+20 draws closer, stay tuned for more coverage.
Watch the video on the IFAD media website.

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Landscape of the Week: Humbo, Ethiopia

Posted on May 14, 2012 by rfriedman

Restoring a Forest

Regreening initiatives are striving to combat or even reverse land degradation in the arid Sahelian region of Africa. This tactic is reaching significant scale, with benefits not only to the environment, but also for agricultural production and the livelihoods of rural people. Tony Rinaudo, World Vision’s natural resource management advisor in Australia, and wife Liz (also with World Vision) discuss one such project in Humbo, Ethiopia. They are travelling in East Africa for three months (March-May) to stimulate the regeneration of forests and farmland using Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration.

Ethiopia – once a land of beautiful forests is now largely characterised by denuded mountains, cavernous eroded gullies and richly soiled fields traversed by smaller channels. From the top of many hills, the landscape appears deeply scarred.

Humbo in southern Ethiopia is an area which has been racked by famine, which resulted in communities receiving food aid year after year.

Humbo hills in 2000 before restoration of the forest

In 2004, World Vision had identified the hills around Humbo as suitable for a large reforestation project and after extensive consultation and negotiation with the community, the Ethiopian government, and the World Bank, 2,728 hectares were selected for a community managed natural regeneration project. It would attract carbon sequestration income to the community, as well as restore the productive capacity of the land, reducing the erosive force of rainwater running off the hills, and reviving the local streams and springs.

After travelling 6 hours on good but congested highway from Addis Ababa to Soddo and then an hour on bone-rattling roads to the project site, we met with communities and climbed one of the hills. The reforestation was so successful that several of us were temporarily lost on the hill (which had previously been completely bare), unable to see or hear the main group.

We were privileged to observe a group from one community working on the hill – pruning the trees in a sustainable way, so that they would grow well and continue to be productive while families were able to harvest firewood for domestic use and grass for their livestock and for sale.

The success of this project was anchored in the simplicity of the concept and the development of the capacity of the communities to manage the forest, their cooperatives, and the governance of their own affairs. Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) is a simple concept – identify the living stumps, select the ones you want to regrow, prune the shoots so that 3-5 remain and continue to care for/protect those shoots. This includes developing a livestock management plan. However, FMNR cannot succeed unless the community learns to work together.

How did this transformation occur? Hailu Tefera, the manager of the project team, has worked with the seven communities to convince them that it was in their interest to restore the hills. The team initially met with strong opposition, as there were those who thought their livelihoods would be threatened and one lobby that tried to convince others that their land would be given to international investors. However they continued to work with politicians, elders, and other significant opinion leaders and eventually won support.

Today, the government has granted user rights to the communities and seven cooperatives manage restored forest. They each have a plan and bylaws for managing their part of the forest, including the management of livestock, the assignment of forest guards, and the development of fire-fighting awareness, skills, and procedures. The cooperatives also identify those who have been disadvantaged by the protection of the hills and provide them with assistance to take up sewing or trading.  People require permission to enter the forest, and this is granted for working bee populations and harvesting of grass and previously pruned branches. These are left on the ground after pruning until the leaves have dried and fallen off, to provide a mulch to protect the slopes from heavy rainfall and to increase the organic matter in the soil. Bare patches where no live stumps were found have been planted with Grevillia robusta (Silky Oak), Eucalyptus, and Acacia saligna. The birds and other wildlife have started to return.

The communities have earned $84,000 for the carbon sequestered so far in the forest, and the seven cooperatives are using it for development projects to benefit the communities. Such projects include the purchase of a grain mill, building storage infrastructure, and investing in transportation to reach bigger markets.

One of the exciting results of this project is that the Ethiopian government and the World Bank now recognise the Humbo project as a model for successful restoration of forests. The Ethiopian government has set a goal of restoring 15 million hectares of forest and FMNR is likely to be included in the strategy.

Humbo hills in 2007 after three years of Community-managed Natural Regeneration

For more information: Humbo Assisted Natural Regeneration Project. This post has been modified with permission from Beating the Famine blog.

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Myriad “Green Bullets” for Food Security

Posted on May 10, 2012 by rfriedman

A recent article from Reuters news argues that there is no one-size-fits-all for a green agricultural revolution. What the climate editor, Laurie Goering, refers to as “myriad ‘green bullets’” resonates with the site-specificity promoted in an integrated agricultural landscape approach. What do these ‘green bullets’ include?

  • Transitioning to crops varieties better-adapted to local weather conditions and utilizing practices that also increase efficiency of scarce resources like water;
  • Promoting urban agriculture to increase city residents’ food security and nutrition:
  • Increasing access to information on production methods as well as extreme event warnings;
  • Reduce food waste pre- and post-harvest, from field to market to plate.

All of these actions are framed in the article within the context of a changing climate. Along with “decisive policy action”, according to the article there are many ways to address food security and environmental concerns depending on local conditions and needs, but no one silver bullet.

Read the full article online.

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Biodiversity and Organic Agriculture: A Symbiotic Relationship

Posted on May 9, 2012 by rfriedman

Last week, we highlighted recent research and discussion around organic versus conventional agricultural methods as a means to feed the world. Today, Dr. Lise Andreasen, International Coordinator for the International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems (ICROFS) in Denmark, explores how organic agriculture can play a role in a landscape approach to sustainable intensification of food production. Similar to the conclusions in last week’s blog post, Andreasen argues that the issue is not so simple; it is influenced by how organic production is placed within a landscape context and how closely it holds to the underlying principles of organic agriculture.

Agroecological methods are fundamental for organic agriculture. The principles of organic agriculture express the core idea that agriculture and farming should emulate and sustain living ecological systems and cycles, maintain and enhance the health of soil, plants, and animals, and be managed in a precautionary and responsible manner to protect the health and well-being of current and future generations and the environment. This should be achieved mainly by the appropriate ‘design and management of biological processes based on ecological systems using natural resources, which are internal to the system’ – also referred to as agro-ecological methods. Based on this, it seems to be a logical conclusion that biodiversity is good for organic agriculture and organic agriculture is good for biodiversity. But is it always true – and automatically so?

In 2008, ICROFS was responsible for a review of previous research on the impacts of organic agriculture on biodiversity (as part of a knowledge synthesis on the potential and barriers for the development of organic agriculture for the Danish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries). The overall conclusions were that:

  • organic systems (crop management and combination of crops) generally support biodiversity in fields and at farm level better than conventional systems – due to higher crop diversity, higher proportion of clover grass areas, higher number of spring crops, the absence of pesticides, and the lower levels of fertilisation;
  • the presence of organically managed areas in a landscape has a positive effect on biodiversity also in the conventionally managed areas, for example, the positive effect on bees increases exponentially with the percent of organic land in intensively farmed landscapes;
  • the impact of organic systems on biodiversity is higher in homogenous landscapes than in heterogeneous landscapes.

Research projects supported by ICROFS also address the impact of organic agriculture on biodiversity at landscape, ecosystem, species and genetic levels. They explore the complex set of interactions between management systems, cropping intensity, landscape structure, and the period under which the land has been cultivated organically with the use of planned diversity such as ‘beetle banks’ and intercrops. For example, a higher diversity of flowering plant species was found in hedgerows bordering organic fields compared with conventional fields, and this difference increased with the number of years since conversion of the organic fields.

Yet, simulations undertaken by the project indicates that modern organic agriculture, as it is undertaken in industrialised countries, does not always guarantee improvements in biodiversity. To do so, it needs to be coupled with extensively managed and/or uncultivated areas. European studies also demonstrate that a certain percentage of organic land in a landscape benefits insects in non-cultivated field margins and also along neighbouring conventional fields. However, the development of organic agriculture taking biodiversity into consideration across landowners in a landscape approach is difficult to find.

Now, there is a distinction between organic principles and practices, and certification. Organic certification based on organic standards is primarily a control and marketing tool, as well as a tool for governmental support to organic farmers. However, though the standards are often interpreted as the norm for organic agriculture, they do not include all aspects associated with the organic principles of agriculture. For example, management of biodiversity and consideration for climate impacts are not criteria. Some organic organisations and certifiers are, however, trying to go further than the organic standards by facilitating farmers in preparing farm plans for preserving biodiversity and reducing their climate impact.

Reconciling biodiversity conservation and food security requires intensification of agriculture through improved use of agro-ecological methods that build on in-depth understanding of biological and technical processes at various levels of scale. These methods have profited from ecological, bio-chemical and molecular research and from farmers’ experience. It is possible that higher productivity, stability of yields, resilience, and sustainability (adaptability) may be achieved by means of appropriate ‘eco-functional intensification’ – such as increased diversity in terms of genetic variation in crops, crop mixtures, inter-cropping, agro-forestry, and un-cultivated areas (habitats) at field, farm, and landscape levels.

Organic agriculture and agroecology are developed based on the idea that goals for increased food security may be reconciled with the goals of biodiversity conservation. But to what extent does the current state of organic agriculture fulfil needs for biodiversity preservation as seen by ‘conservationists’? Should the motto be ‘intensification & separation’ or ‘extensification and integration’? And further, how can the organic principles of agriculture be better-incorporated and interpreted in standards and the certification framework to include ecosystem services such as biodiversity and climate mitigation?

Further Reading:

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A Sustainable Future for Food and Agriculture

Posted on May 8, 2012 by rfriedman

A newly released report by the U.N. Division for Sustainable Development, Food and Agriculture: The future of sustainability, provides strategic input to the “Sustainable Development in the 21st Century Report” to be launched at the Rio+20 Summit.

On our current trajectory, severe disruptions to national and regional food systems are highly likely to happen – the main question is when. Exposing unforeseen areas of consensus – with contributions from more than 70 global agri-food leaders in the business, policy, green, and social arenas – the report lays out concrete steps for sustainable and resilient food and agriculture systems. By opening the silos of partisan thinking to invite reasoned discussion, it also exposes areas of disagreement and advances a key set of specific “high impact” areas where smart decisions will make the most difference.

The report highlights nine key areas of consensus have emerged as the key paths of action:

  1. Organized small and medium farmers, fully including women farmers, should be a primary focus of investment – recognizing that private enterprise will play a significant role in many solutions.
  2. Desine the goal in terms of human nutrition rather than simply “more production.”
  3. Pursue high yields within a healthy ecology – they are not mutually exclusive and policy and research must reflect that.
  4. Impel innovation and the availability of diverse technologies suitable in different socioeconomic and ecological contexts.
  5. Significantly reduce waste along the entire food chain.
  6. Avoid diverting food crops and productive land for biofuels, but explore decentralized biofuel systems to promote energy and livelihood security that also diversify and restore rural landscapes.
  7. Insist on intelligent and transparent measurement of results – we cannot manage what we cannot measure.
  8. Develop and adapt public and private institutions that can effectively respond to these new goals.
  9. Motivate and reward investments and business systems that result in measurable impacts to the “public good.”
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An Agrobiodiverse Road to Rio

Posted on May 7, 2012 by rfriedman

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) Rio+20 takes place in less than two months, the 20-22 of June, in order to forge a future with reduced poverty, improved social equity, and enhanced environmental protection. With agriculture forming the basis of many developing countries, it will likely play an important role in the upcoming conference. Many organizations are making preparations, crafting messages, and developing recommendations. The following is adapted from Bioversity International’s newly launched campaign “On the Road to Rio+20,” which postures the “use and conservation of agricultural biodiversity – including crops, forestry and other components of agricultural landscapes” as a means of improving rural livelihoods.

Set against an imposing Himalayan backdrop, in the Kaski district of Nepal, Surya Adhikari and his wife, Saraswati Adhikari, manage their farm. They grow 152 varieties of plant species including medicinal herbs, fuelwood, grass, orange, coffee, and lemons. Surya’s farm has become a model for visitors from all over the world who come to find out how mixing agricultural biodiversity, the laws of nature and scientific knowledge together can benefit their own farming practices. Future plans include an agricultural college in the local area to encourage young people to follow in Surya’s footsteps.

But Surya’s story does not start here. Like many smallholder farmers in Nepal, Surya’s family has been engaged in farming from the time of his forefathers. Facing financial difficulties, exacerbated by steep medical bills after his wife was bitten by a snake, Surya had to sell precious farming land, leaving him and his wife with just 3 ropani (1 ropani = 500 square meters) of difficult wet terrain to cultivate. A mixture of hard work and applying knowledge about how to use agricultural biodiversity and plant breeding methods more effectively, has slowly turned the land into a profitable and productive enterprise.

An eagerness to better understand how science and nature can work together led Surya to take part in a participatory plant breeding and diversity management programme, run by Bioversity International with partners. This programme helped enhance his already extensive knowledge of local crops, and enabled him to use local diversity to breed new crop varieties, and pass this knowledge on to others. A recent trip saw him travelling as far afield as Skrang in Sarawak, Malaysia, to speak to local farmers about the importance of participatory plant breeding for improving rice varieties.

Read the complete blog entry from Bioversity here.

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Mainstreaming Ecosystem Services into Farm Policies

Posted on May 4, 2012 by rfriedman

We have looked at ecosystem services provision within agricultural landscapes in a couple of different contexts on the Landscapes Blog. Today, Dr. Tobias Plieninger, Head of the Ecosystem Services Research Group at the Berlin-Brandenberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany, provides a European policy perspective on the topic. It calls for a more integrated and spatially-specific approach to agri-environmental policy and incentives.

Agricultural landscapes are vital for supplying ecosystem services to human society, but most modern farming practices detrimentally impact the environment. Public agricultural support policies have been critically important in shaping the transformation of agriculture and agricultural landscapes. The largest agricultural support system worldwide, the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), has now come to a critical point. Major decisions concerning its design and implementation after 2013 are about to be taken. In a policy paper that appears today in Conservation Letters, a team of German scientists argues that the debate on this reform process should be used to trigger a transition from commodity-based subsidy policies to those centered on efficient provision of ecosystem services from agricultural landscapes.

In their essay, Mainstreaming ecosystem services through reformed European agricultural policies, the authors from the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Freiburg University, and Ecologic Institute note:

“Agricultural support schemes represent potentially powerful instruments for the provision of ecosystem services at a financial scale far above any other payment schemes for ecosystem services, including global carbon markets. But so far, most support schemes have not been targeted to effectively enhance ecosystem services beyond agricultural commodities.”

One of the most important reform proposals of the European Commission is to dedicate 30% of direct payments to “greening” measures, which are supposed to deliver environmental and climate benefits as part of farming activities. This is considered a landmark decision and involves an estimated rise from US$3.9 billion to US$11.8 billion in payments for ecosystem services expenditures within the CAP. However, the paper argues that the proposed underlying policy mechanisms are too simplistic in their design and ignore the science of ecosystem services. In order to effectively enhance ecosystem services from farmland, the authors recommend orientation along the following key insights from ecosystem services research:

  • Agricultural support must be linked to verifiable provision of ecosystem services and thus to benefits for human well-being.
  • Nonmarket valuation methods schemes must be fostered for balanced provision of all ecosystem services categories.
  • Payments must be designed to foster multiple bundles of ecosystem services to minimize trade-offs.
  • Targets must be defined regionally, respecting the site-specificity of ecosystem services provision.
  • Payments must match the spatial scales of ecosystem services provision through collective management at landscape scale.
  • Payments for ecosystem services require a long-term funding perspective and performance-based co-financing strategies.
  • Payments for ecosystem services must be periodically evaluated to tackle uncertainties in ecosystem provision through adaptive management.
  • Payments for ecosystem services must be coherent with other policies to avoid competing incentives.

The authors conclude: “It is now time to amend the Commission’s proposals through more serious consideration of ecosystem services insights, notably in regard to the implementation of the Commission’s proposed measures. If this succeeds, the reform process bears the potential to become an exemplar for redirecting farm policies elsewhere in the world toward sustainability. In particular, it might productively inform the renewal of the U.S. Farm Bill, for which major reforms toward more sustainable agricultural systems have been likewise proposed.”

Read the article in Conservation Letters

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Closing the Gap

Posted on May 2, 2012 by rfriedman

“The world already produces more than 1 ½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet,” noted an article from the Institute for Food and Development Policy. Referencing a new study in the journal Nature by Seufert, Ramankutty, and Foley, the article argues that the primary concern now in combating food insecurity is with access and not production. However, authors Stephen Gliessman and Eric Holtz-Gimenez concede that the research does add to a growing body of evidence that the difference in yields between conventional and organic agriculture production are not as substantial as previously thoughts In fact, the article cites the decades of field trials at the Rodale Institute that have produced similar results. In addition there has been increased attention on how agroecological methods and diversified farming systems can enhance the resilience of the crop production to extreme climatic events and increase sustainability over the long-term. And this type of agriculture may be of greater consequence anyway to the poorest and most food insecure, for whom larger monocrop or input-intensive agriculture is not economically nor environmentally feasible.

So what does this mean for people, food, and nature? It lends support to the notion that there is no silver bullet, and agricultural solutions need to be context-specific so as to support needs of local people and ecosystems. But it also raises the issue that food security is not just a matter of production, but requires social and institutional supports, as well.

Read the article on Food First.

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