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Charlie Pye-Smith is a freelance writer. He is the author of over a dozen books and scores of newspapers articles. He has also worked as a radio presenter and written and researched television documentaries on environmental issues. He currently works for several international organisations involved in research and development, including the World Agroforestry Centre. This book draws heavily on the Centre’s Trees for Change series.

The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) is the world’s leading research institution on the role of trees outside forests and on farms, with a vision of a rural transformation in the developing world assmallholder households increase their use of trees.

For more information, visit www.worldagroforestry.org. CHARLIE PYE-SMITH

for

TREES FOR LIFE

A book that brings to life the fascinating story of how farmers in developing countries are using trees to build a better future for themselves, and how scientists are working with them to create a more prosperous future.

“A journey through the world of agroforestry that will take you from the home gardens in Borneo to the well-wooded cattle pastures of Nicaragua; from the sand-swept parklands of Niger to the cocoa gardens of West Africa”

TREES FOR LIFECreating a more prosperous future through agroforestry

Trees for Life takes the reader on a journey through the world of agroforestry: from the home gardens in Borneo to the well-wooded cattle pastures of Nicaragua; from the sand-swept parklands of Niger to the cocoa gardens of West Africa; from the palmeries of Amazonia to dairy farms that cling to the fl anks of Africa’s Rift Valley.

Agroforestry – the practice of growing trees on farms – provides a living for a sixth of humanity, and nearly all of us use and consume some of its goods and services. Ever-increasing numbers of farmers are planting trees to increase soil fertility and crop yields, restore degraded soils, sequester carbon and reduce erosion. Trees on farms provide a wide range of goods: from cash crops like coffee to vitamin-rich fruits; from animal fodder to fuelwood; from resins to medicines. For millions of people, agroforestry provides a signifi cant source of income and a pathway to prosperity. This is their story.

This book was produced to mark the World Congress on

Agroforestry 2014, held in Delhi, India, 10–14 February 2014

The World Agroforestry Centre is a member of

the CGIAR Consortium

The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit

supported the printing of this book

Creating a more prosperous future through agroforestry

for

The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) is the world’s leading research institution on the role of trees outside forests and on farms. ICRAF is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, with six regional offi ces located in Cameroon, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya and Peru. We conduct research in 28 other countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Our vision is a rural transformation in the developing world as smallholder households increase their use of trees in agricultural landscapes. In this vision, more trees on farms will improve food security, nutrition, incomes, health and social cohesion, provide a renewable source of energy and building materials, and promote environmental sustainability.

The Centre’s mission is to generate science-based knowledge about the diverse roles that trees play in agricultural landscapes, and to use that research to advance the implementation of policies and practices that benefi t the poor and the environment.

As part of its work to bring tree-based solutions to bear on poverty and environmental problems, the Centre’s researchers – working in close collaboration with national partners – have developed new technologies, tools and policy recommendations for increased food security and ecosystem health. For more information, visit www.worldagroforestry.org.

The World Agroforestry Centre is one of the 15 research centres that are members of the CGIAR Consortium. CGIAR is a global

Photo right:Trees, orchards and woodlots are an integral part of the farmed landscape in Rwanda.

agricultural research partnership for a food-secure future, pursuing broad development challenges that include poverty alleviation, enhanced food security and health, improved productivity with lower environmental, and social costs, and resilience in the face of climate change and other external shocks.

© World Agroforestry Centre, Nairobi, Kenya, 2014

Pye-Smith C. 2013. Trees for Life. Creating a more prosperous future through

agroforestry. Nairobi: World Agroforestry Centre

ISBN: 978-92-9059-357-7

Publisher: World Agroforestry CentreAuthor: Charlie Pye-SmithProject management: Paul StapletonDesign and layout: Scriptoria Sustainable Development CommunicationsThis book was printed in India by Pragati Offset Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad, India (www.pragati.com)

Text from this book may be quoted or reproduced without charge, provided the source is acknowledged. No use of this publication may be made for resale or other commercial purposes.

All images remain the sole property of their source and may not be used for any purpose without written permission of the source.

World Agroforestry CentreUnited Nations Avenue, GigiriPO Box 30677-00100Nairobi, Kenya.Email: worldagroforestry@cgiar.orgWeb: www.worldagroforestry.org

3

CONTENTS

Introduction: TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE? ............................................................................................1

Chapter 1: FOOD, TREES AND A FERTILE FUTURE ......................................................................25

Chapter 2: A HEALTHY HARVEST .................................................................................................49

Chapter 3: A WEALTH OF OPPORTUNITIES..................................................................................73

Chapter 4: SUSTAINING OUR LIVESTOCK ...................................................................................97

Chapter 5: COPING WITH A CHANGING CLIMATE .....................................................................117

Chapter 6: CLOSE TO NATURE .................................................................................................143

Photo left:Lehri Lal, a farmer in Rajasthan, India, has established an orchard which will sequester carbon and provide him with fruit and an income.

6

1

Agroforestry provides a living for at least 1.2 billion people – approximately a sixth of humanity – and nearly all of us use and consume some of the goods and services it provides. The coffee you had for breakfast, the chocolate you’ll have after dinner, the rubber in your bicycle tyres: there’s a good chance they’ll have come from agroforestry systems which yield timber, fruit and fi rewood as well as coffee, cocoa beans and latex. If you live in East Africa, the milk you drink may come from smallholdings where fodder trees provide dairy cows with their main source of protein. In an increasing number of countries, many staple food crops – maize, millet, sorghum – are grown in fi elds whose fertility comes from nitrogen-enhancing trees, rather than bags of expensive mineral fertiliser.

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE?

INTRODUCTION

Photo left:China’s ‘Green Wall’. Trees have been planted in the shifting sands in Inner Mongolia in an effort to hold back the encroaching desert.

Fodder crops grown in farmers’ fi elds are helping to boost milk production in East Africa.

2

In Indonesia, over 95% of the fruits and nuts sold in local markets are grown in ‘home gardens’ which are so rich in fauna and fl ora that you could be forgiven for thinking they were little chunks of primary forest. On the shelves of pharmacies and health shops in the great cities of Europe and the United States you will fi nd numerous products – anti-bacterial drugs, aphrodisiacs, vitamin drinks, breakfast cereals, fruit bars – whose raw material has been harvested from tropical agroforests.

Look beyond the standard defi nition of agroforestry – land-use systems and practices where woody perennials are deliberately integrated with crops or livestock, and often both – at the people who practise agroforestry, and the landscapes they have shaped, and you will get a feel for what this book is about. A journey through the world of agroforestry will take

you from the home gardens in Borneo to the well-wooded cattle pastures of Nicaragua; from the sand-swept parklands of Niger to the cocoa gardens of West Africa; from the palmeries of Amazonia to dairy farms that cling to the fl anks of Africa’s Rift Valley.

In Indonesia, over 95% of the fruits and nuts sold in local markets are grown in ‘home gardens’

3

Some 50 species of wild trees are currently the subject of domestication programmes using modern techniques in plant breeding. Working in collaboration with local communities, scientists are helping to bring these species out of the forests and onto farmers’ fi elds, with the aim of maximising their potential. However, tree domestication, which is one manifestation of agroforestry, has an ancient history.

Take marula (Sclerocarya birrea), a southern African tree whose edible seeds are encased in a tart fruit rich in vitamin C. “Long before the development of agricultural crops, hunter-gatherers were eating marula fruit,” says Anthony Cunningham, an ethno-botanist with People and Plants International. “They’d pick the best fruit, then scatter the seeds around their camps.” These seeds would eventually germinate and mature into fruit-bearing trees, ensuring, in evolutionary

terms, the survival of the tastiest. Marula is now fully domesticated on farmers’ fi elds and the fruit is used to make the liqueur Amarula.

Archaeological excavations in central India show that humans were making use of 63 species of fruit trees during the Mesolithic period, which began 10 000 years ago. Some of the fruits were eaten raw; others were roasted. Over the centuries, agroforestry became a way of transforming nature’s bounty into food, fi bre and shelter. It was a practice promoted by emperors as well as peasant farmers: Ashoka, who ruled India from around 269 to 232 BC, introduced a system of land use which involved planting mangoes and jackfruit together with plantains, grapes and medicinal herbs.

By the 1st century AD, there was a thriving sea trade between India’s Malabar Coast and the Mediterranean,

SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL

4

with the former providing European merchants with ivory, sandalwood and spices such as black pepper and nutmeg. Visit Kerala today and you will see home gardens densely populated with spice trees, coconut, betel nut and dozens of other woody species. Farmers here are continuing a tradition of land use that was fl ourishing during the days of the Roman Empire.

However, for tens of millions of farmers – the number grows each year – agroforestry is not so much a bequest from the past as a new way of doing things, a means of survival in a challenging world.

Jungle rubber gardens in Sumatra, Indonesia, support a great diversity of wildlife.

5

Early one wet, windy morning, two scientists from the World Agroforestry Centre’s regional offi ce for West and Central Africa, Zac Tchoundjeu and Ebenezer Asaah, arrive at Riba Agroforestry Resource Centre, which occupies a windy hilltop some 2 000 metres above sea level in Cameroon’s North-West Region. During the course of the next hour, 28 farmers arrive at the centre on foot, undeterred by the inclement weather. They’ve come to tell the visitors about the help they have received from Riba and the benefi ts of a project managed by the World Agroforestry Centre.

Some of the farmers had left their homes long before dawn and walked several hours to get here. “It is proof of the way that agroforestry has changed their lives that these farmers are willing to come so far on a day like this,” says George Kangong, who manages the centre. When George fi rst came here in the mid-1990s, he found a scene of desolation. The hill tops were bald and treeless, the soils so degraded that farmers

had abandoned the land. Now, the centre’s 7-hectare plot boasts a woodlot, a network of dense hedges, tree nurseries and fertile fi elds growing wheat, potatoes and beans. There is also a training hall and dormitories for visitors.

It takes the farmers the best part of the morning to describe how they have put the agroforestry training they received here into practice. The fi rst to speak is Sakar Abubakar. He explains that he used to harvest just one 50 kilogram bag of maize a year; now, on exactly the same plot of land, he gets up to six bags, thanks to the increase in soil fertility brought about by planting nitrogen-fi xing trees. “My children have more to eat now, and I can pay their school fees in one go, rather than in instalments, as I used to,” he says.

Estella Bondkela says that the steep piece of land she farms used to be heavily eroded, providing her with meagre crop yields. George suggested she

CHANGING LIVES AND LANDSCAPES

6

Agroforestry has helped to transform the lives of farmers associated with the Riba Agroforestry Resource Centre in north-west Cameroon.

7

should construct earth ridges planted with nitrogen-fi xing trees to prevent erosion and improve fertility. “I wanted to abstain at fi rst,” she says, “but George convinced me that I should do it.” Since then, Estella has established seven ridges. “The soil is much more fertile and my yields have increased,” she says. Before she received training in agroforestry, Estella had been thinking of becoming a teacher. Now she has abandoned the idea: farming is providing her with all she needs.

Angela Bongbera tells the visiting scientists that the medicinal plants she is growing on her farm have helped to improve her family’s health. “In the past, we all seemed to be going to hospital for one thing or another,” she says, “but now we rarely go, and that is saving us money.” Other women, eager to speak, say fruit from the trees they have planted has enriched

The money farmers earn from agroforestry practices translates into school fees and exercise books, bricks and mortar, tin roofs and solar lighting

their diets and improved the health of their children. A livestock farmer explains that he’s been planting trees which provide fodder for his animals during the dry season; they are healthier and more productive as a result.

These farmers’ stories – there were many more – provide a glimpse of the benefi ts of agroforestry. On a larger canvas, agroforestry is helping tens of millions of people to tackle some of the greatest challenges we face: hunger, poor nutrition, land degradation, the loss of biodiversity, even climate change. And the money farmers earn from a multitude of agroforestry practices translates into school fees and exercise books, bricks and mortar, tin roofs and solar lighting, motorcycles and mobile phones; in other words, it translates into many things which the more fortunate among us take for granted.

1010

9

Agroforestry is not only a land-use practice. It is a science. Wander through the corridors of the World Agroforestry Centre’s headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and you will get a glimpse of its multidisciplinary nature. Among its staff are ecologists, foresters, plant physiologists, geneticists, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, soil scientists, geographers and software designers. While some spend much of their time in the offi ce or laboratory, others are out in the fi eld, observing the use of trees on farms, working with farmers, helping to develop new land-use practices.

The focus of research conducted by the World Agroforestry Centre and its many partners has varied from one continent to another. In sub-Saharan Africa, there has been a strong emphasis on improving soil fertility and crop yields through the use of nitrogen-

THE SCIENCE OF SUCCESS

fi xing trees and shrubs. In Asia, scientists have been preoccupied with forest-based land-use systems, such as those involving the cultivation of rubber and cocoa. In Latin America, research has focused on silvopastoral landscapes, where livestock graze below a canopy of trees, and on the use of shade trees in coffee gardens.

In 2009, a team of scientists published the results of a study which used remote sensing data to analyse the extent of tree cover on agricultural land. “Before we conducted the study, the only fi gures available were guesstimates,” says Richard Coe of the World Agroforestry Centre, one of the co-authors of Trees on Farm. These had varied wildly, with one estimate as low as 50 000 hectares and another, also speculative, as high as 307 million hectares – the latter exceeding the former by an improbable factor of over 6 000. Richard

Photo left:Remote sensing image of sub-Saharan Africa. Fertile soils tend to have higher levels of soil organic carbon.

10

admits there were many limitations to the Trees on Farm study, but it provides us with the best overview to date of the importance of agroforestry in different parts of the world.

The study found that over 1 billion hectares of agricultural land – or 43% – have more than 10% tree cover, and these areas are home to almost a third of the 1.8 billion people who live on agricultural land. Approximately 0.6 billion hectares of agricultural land have more than 20% tree cover, and 160 million hectares more than 50%.

Agroforestry is a feature of all agricultural landscapes, although the extent to which it is practised varies. In Central America, 98% of agricultural land has more than 10% tree cover and over half has more than 30% tree cover. Likewise, agroforestry is a major

land use in South-East Asia and South America. Tree cover on farms is much lower in the arid lands of sub-Saharan Africa, in eastern China and in north-west India. The study found there is a strong positive correlation between tree cover and humidity, although it didn’t reveal a clear relationship between tree cover and population density. “This is presumably because other factors, such as markets, government policies, development programmes and local history also infl uence the level of tree cover on farmland,” says Richard.

The study’s global fi gures for tree cover are almost certainly conservative. There are extensive areas of agroforestry which are classifi ed as forest on global land-use databases, rather than as agricultural land, so these areas have been missed out. They include, among other land uses, the jungle rubber systems

Photo right:In Central America, over half of the farmland has more than 30% tree cover. Here, in the highlands of Nicaragua, coffee is grown under a canopy of shade.

Over 1 billion hectares of agricultural land have more than 10% tree cover

13

12

in Indonesia and cocoa agroforestry in West Africa. While the area devoted to the former is contracting, the latter has been steadily expanding, and will continue to do so.

At the beginning of the 20th century, global cocoa consumption stood at about 100 000 tonnes. By 2010, it had risen to 3.6 million tonnes. To keep pace with rising demand, much of it fuelled by the growth of the middle classes in China and India, annual production must rise by 1 million tonnes over the next decade. Although some of this will come from monocultural – that is, single species – cocoa plantations, a signifi cant quantity will be produced by smallholders who grow cocoa as part of a multispecies agroforestry system.

The ‘nurseries of excellence programme’ managed by the World Agroforestry Centre has helped farmers in Aceh, Indonesia, to establish high-quality rubber seedlings.

13

landscape in terms of the ‘forest transition curve’. This provides a theoretical way of describing the changes which take place as countries develop.

In the early stages of development, forest cover remains largely intact. Think, for example, of most of Papua New Guinea today and large tracts of the Congo Basin, or much of Europe 5 000 years ago. Over time, the human population increases and the forest is exploited for its timber, or progressively cleared to make way for farmland. The forest transition curve dips downwards and eventually much of the original forest has been replaced by annual crops and grassland.

This is not the end of the story. A variety of factors may then lead to an increase in tree cover, so the forest transition curve begins to rise again, like a snake

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE

After Zac and Ebenezer leave the Riba Agroforestry Resource Centre, they head west to the intensely cultivated hill country close to the Nigerian border. Thanks to programmes to domesticate wild trees like safou – the African plum – and bush mango, the landscape here is undergoing a profound change. “Ten years ago, you’d hardly see any safou in this area,” says Zac. “Now you see them growing everywhere. And if you come back here in 10 years’ time, I hope – I’m sure – you’ll see improved varieties of indigenous fruit tree on every smallholding.” Not only will the landscape be more densely covered with trees, he says, farmers and their families will be better fed, healthier and wealthier.

This is how Zac tells the story to a visiting journalist. In the company of scientists, he might put it differently, framing what has happened to the

14

Agroforestry can also help countries and communities avoid the dramatic, and sometimes environmentally disastrous, journey from high forest to treeless arable land and pasture. An outstanding example of this comes from Amazonia.

Stimulated by poverty and encouraged by government policies, large numbers of peasant farmers have migrated, and continue to migrate, from the Andes to the heavily forested fl atlands on the banks of the Peruvian Amazon. While some of the new arrivals establish viable cocoa and fruit farms, many practise shifting cultivation. They clear a small plot of forest where they plant rice, and perhaps some beans and bananas. These soils are so infertile that they only get one crop of rice and beans, and a year or two more of bananas. They then abandon the plot, cut down more forest and continue the cycle of slash-and-burn. Before long, the original forest is lost, yielding just

lifting its head above the grass. In the 1990s, over a third of the countries in the world were heading in this direction. In many developed economies, urbanisation and the increase in farm labour costs, as well as conservation policies, have encouraged farmers to abandon marginal lands, which have reverted to scrub and forest. In other parts of the world, an increase in tree planting has been stimulated by a rise in demand for timber, fuelwood, resins, oils and fruits. Environmental considerations have also been a key factor: forests have been created to protect watersheds, restore degraded land and sequester carbon.

The Cameroon story, like many other stories in this book, provides an example of agroforestry on the upward curve, with once-impoverished farmers transforming degraded farmland – in some areas, little more than weed-infested grassland – into a complex landscape of trees, shrubs and annual crops.

Agroforestry can also help countries avoid the dramatic, and sometimes environmentally disastrous, journey from high forest to treeless arable land and pasture

15

enough to keep the family in food, but not much else.However, it needn’t be like this. Several communities in the Amazon – most famously the Japanese settlers of Tomé-Açu, in Brazil (see A Brazilian model, page 18) – have proved that agroforestry is one of the best ways of utilising this sort of land. Besides yielding a better income per unit area than slash-and-burn farming, or even cattle ranching, and supporting many more jobs, agroforestry provides many of the environmental benefi ts associated with primary forest. This is a system which can survive for centuries, not just a few years. Stories such as this are testimony to the importance of agroforestry and its ability to help rural communities tackle some of the most pressingproblems we face.

Over six million smallholder families make a living from growing cocoa.

1818

In parts of the Peruvian Amazon, the destruction of the forests, mainly by slash-and-burn farming, has led to severe erosion.

1919

18

In 1929, 189 Japanese immigrants arrived in Tomé-Açu, a

remote area of dense tropical forest in the Brazilian state

of Pará. Their aim, improbably, was to develop the Amazon

basin before making a triumphant return to Japan. The early

years of settlement were traumatic: many died of malaria;

attempts to grow cocoa as a cash crop failed. However, two

black pepper seedlings, bought from Singapore in 1933,

provided the key to future prosperity. With the profi ts from

pepper – production reached 630 tonnes by 1953 – the

community built mansions, hospitals and schools, many of

which still grace the town.

However, the pepper monocultures were devastated

by disease during the 1960s and 1970s. A farmers’

organisation, Cooperativa Agricola Mista de Tomé-Açu

(CAMTA), began looking for alternatives, and over the years

farmers developed a complex system of agroforestry which

involves growing fruit, timber and vegetables on the same

plot of land, year after year.

The agroforestry systems established in Tomé-Açu,

which now has a population of some 300 ethnic Japanese,

make much more sense from an economic point of view

than slash-and-burn farming and cattle ranching, which

have transformed vast areas of Amazonia. The income on

10–20 hectares of agroforestry is roughly the same as the

income for cattle ranching on 400–1 200 hectares. Just as

importantly, agroforestry helps to retain much of the forest

biodiversity.

A BRAZILIAN MODEL

Photo right:Lurdiel de Souza Maia harvests açai berries from palms next to the Picano River in the Amazon estuary, Brazil.

19

The income on 10–20 hectares of agroforestry is roughly the same as the income for cattle ranching on 400–1 200 hectares

22

21

When President Julius Nyerere visited Shinyanga, in

northern Tanzania, in 1984 he was shocked by what he saw.

Decades of deforestation and poor land management had

turned the area into the ‘Desert of Tanzania’. He immediately

launched the Shinyanga Soil Conservation Programme,

widely known by its Swahili acronym, HASHI (Hifadhi

Ardhi Shinyanga). This has helped tens of thousands of

smallholders to restore the degraded landscape.

One of HASHI’s great achievements was to revive a

traditional system of management which increases the

supply of dry season livestock fodder. These fodder

reserves, known as ngitili, also provide fi rewood, building

timber and a refuge for wildlife.

“We used to walk long distances to collect fi rewood, and it

could take us many hours,” explains Teresia Gashyle, the

chair of Upendo Women’s Group in Igung’hwa village, “but

since the ngitili near our farms has been restored, we’ve

been able to collect fi rewood there, and that’s saved us

a lot of time and effort.” The women also spend less time

searching for water, fodder and thatching grass. Less time

collecting life’s essentials, says Teresia, means women now

have more time to spend with their families and more time to

carry out productive, income-earning tasks on their farms.

TERESIA’S STORY

Photo left:Teresia Gashyle at her tree nursery.

22

INDIA’S CARBON FARMERS

Agriculture is both a victim of climate change – changing

weather patterns are likely to lead to lower crop yields in

many countries – and a signifi cant cause. It is estimated

that 20% of India’s greenhouse gas emissions come from

the agricultural sector. Reducing emissions, and helping

smallholders gain access to the carbon market, lies at

the heart of a project managed by the World Agroforestry

Centre.

Several thousand farmers in Rajasthan are now adopting a

range of measures – including agroforestry – to reduce their

emissions and sequester carbon. Planting trees signifi cantly

increases the amount of carbon in the soil; it also traps

carbon in woody material that can later be transformed into

furniture and building timber. Even if the farmers don’t profi t

from the carbon market, agroforestry provides a range of

other benefi ts.

“In the past, the only trees we regularly planted were neem,

karanj and subabul,” says Lehri Lal, a farmer near Udaipur.

The species provided them with oil and livestock fodder.

“But once we learned how fruit trees could improve our

incomes, we began to plant pomegranates, guava, custard

apples and citrus.” Lehri has a rapidly maturing orchard on

a plot of land just below a rocky hilltop, and in the fi elds

below he has intercropped citrus trees with wheat. His

uncle, Narayan Lal, has done the same on a bigger scale,

planting pawpaw and guava in fi elds originally devoted to

annual crops.

23

The carbon project has also encouraged farmers to use

energy-saving light bulbs and fuel-effi cient stoves. “At the

household scale, all these measures may sound trivial,”

says Pal Singh, the World Agroforestry Centre’s regional

coordinator for South Asia. “But when you add together

the activities of many thousands of farming families, they

become highly signifi cant, both for the environment

and the farmers.”

In Andhra Pradesh, India, Dharavat Rajitha’s family used to take 12 days to gather enough wood to last a year. Now that they have fuel-effi cient stoves, it takes just half that time.

26

25

FOOD, TREES AND A FERTILE FUTURE

We hear so much bad news nowadays – about poverty and food shortages, confl ict and corruption, fl oods and droughts – that it’s easy to forget the good. There is, in fact, much to celebrate, as the United Nations pointed out in its 2013 Human Development Report: “Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast.” Dozens of countries and billions of people have been steadily moving up the ‘development ladder’.

In 1990, governments pledged to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015. This was the fi rst of the Millennium Development Goals. Many thought it optimistic, yet it was achieved three years ahead of schedule. In East Asia, 63% of the rural population lived in extreme poverty in 1988. Within 20 years, the proportion had fallen to 16%. The equivalent fi gures for Latin America were 27% and 10%. During the same period – and this was no coincidence – crop yields rose.

CHAPTER 1

Photo left:In Niger, tens of thousands of farmers are encouraging the natural regeneration of native trees. Besides improving soil fertility, the trees provide fuelwood, fodder and resins.

Massive erosion caused by tree clearance and poor farming practices in Tigray, Ethiopia.

26

However, one region, sub-Saharan Africa, went in the opposite direction. Between 1988 and 2008, the percentage of rural poor, most of whom are involved in agriculture, rose from 50% to over 60%. Many millions of African farmers are not producing enough to provide a healthy diet for their families, let alone a surplus to sell in the market.

Since the mid-1970s, Africa’s population has doubled, and in many countries this has led to a decrease in farm size. Young men and women whose parents used to cultivate 4 or 5 hectares of land are now trying to survive on a harvest which comes from half a hectare, sometimes less. They cannot afford to leave fi elds fallow, the traditional way of replenishing the nutrients taken by crops, and few have the money to buy mineral fertilisers. So they grow the same crops, year after year, on the same plot of land – an exhausting

process, for both farmers and the soil. As a result, average maize yields have barely risen above 1 tonne per hectare over the past 40 years. In contrast, average grain yields in South and East Asia have risen from about 1 tonne per hectare to 2.5 tonnes and 4.5 tonnes, respectively, during the same period.

Infertile fi elds, poverty and hunger: these are the daily facts of life for many millions of African farmers. Tackling these problems is no easy task, and requires a whole range of measures, including a signifi cant increase in government spending on agriculture and rural development. But there is also a low-cost remedy to declining soil fertility. By planting green fertilisers – leguminous plants which draw nitrogen from the air to produce compounds which enrich the soil – farmers can restore fertility and increase yields.

Infertile fi elds, poverty and hunger:these are the daily facts of life for many millions of African farmers

27

The experience of Mariko Majoni, a Malawian farmer, provides a window on the future. After retiring from the prison service in the mid-1990s, Mariko used some of his pension to buy mineral fertilisers to spread on his maize fi elds in the village of Jiya. However, after a few years his pension ran out; he could no longer afford fertilisers and his yields declined. Fortunately, he lived near Makoka Agricultural Research Station, where the World Agroforestry Centre had been conducting long-term experiments intercropping maize with a nitrogen-fi xing tree, Gliricidia sepium.

Mariko visited the centre and was impressed by what he saw. He returned home with some seeds, and when the next rains came he planted Gliricidia seedlings between the rows of maize. “People said I was studying to become a madman when they saw me planting trees on my fi elds,” he recalls. The following

A MESSAGE FROM MALAWI

The use of nitrogen-fi xing fertiliser trees is helping to increase crop yields in many parts of Malawi.

28

year, before sowing his maize, he pruned the fertiliser trees down to the ground and incorporated their leaves and twigs into the soil. For a while, his yields remained low, but after a couple of seasons things began to change, precisely as the scientists at Makoka had predicted. Before long, he was getting excellent yields.

“My soil is now very rich and much better at retaining water than it used to be,” says Mariko. In fact, during one dry period some of his neighbours accused him of witchcraft – they thought he had attracted all the rains to his fi elds during the night – as his crops were in such good condition. But the neighbours soon changed their tune. Mariko subsequently provided many with seeds, trained them in how to use different fertiliser trees and helped them set up their own tree nurseries.

By 2005, an estimated 100 000 smallholders in Malawi were benefi ting to some extent from the use of fertiliser trees. What was needed now was a programme to scale up these practices across the country. Malawi’s Agroforestry Food Security Programme was launched in 2007. Funded by Irish Aid, the programme has helped over 200 000 farming families, or about 1.3 million of the poorest people in Malawi, to improve their crop yields and income.

Mary Sabuloni, a widow and mother of eight children in Mapanga, is one of many farmers who learned how to use fertiliser trees. “I used to get about 10 bags of maize from my fi elds,” says Mary. “Now I get at least 25 bags.” In practical terms, this has made a big difference. “In the past, we often went hungry,

29

but now I can feed my family all year round.” She adds that the Gliricidia prunings also provide her with signifi cant quantities of fuelwood.

During 10 years of continuous cultivation at the Makoka Agricultural Research Station, the use of Gliricidia without mineral fertilisers yielded an average 3.7 tonnes of maize per hectare. The judicious use of small amounts of fertiliser with Gliricidia pushed yields up to 5.5 tonnes. This compared with just 1.1 tonnes on plots where maize was grown without mineral fertilisers or Gliricidia. These results came from experiments designed by a team of researchers; this was not farming in the raw. So how were farmers faring? To fi nd out, agro-ecologist Gudeta Sileshi and his colleagues examined the fi ndings of 94 peer-reviewed studies.

Mary Sabuloni is one of many farmers to benefi t from an agroforestry project.

30

use half the recommended dose of mineral fertilisers together with legumes. However, adding more fertiliser does little to increase yields further.

Subsequent studies have revealed that just because a farmer gets high yields one year when using mineral fertilisers, this doesn’t necessarily mean he or she will get the same the next. Maize yields are more stable – in other words, they remain constant year after year – in fi elds where the crop is grown with nitrogen-fi xing trees like Gliricidia. “The application of mineral fertilisers without the additional organic matter may fail to yield long-term benefi ts for farmers,” says Sileshi. Leguminous plants, in contrast, increase underground carbon, nourish living organisms in the soil and help to retain moisture (see Trees, worms, centipedes..., page 41).

Their analysis confi rmed that the use of green fertilisers – such as leguminous trees – increases crop yields, with the response being highest on nutrient-poor soils; in other words, it works best on precisely the sort of land which is used by the majority of poor farming families. In areas with low or erratic rainfall, green fertilisers reduce the likelihood of crop failure, with woody legumes such as Gliricidia making scarce water resources available to maize crops. In areas prone to high rainfall, green fertilisers improve the soil’s absorptive capacity and mop up some of the excess water.

“Our analysis suggests there are also important synergistic effects when mineral fertilisers and nitrogen-fi xing legumes are used together,” says Sileshi. Maize yields increase by 25–30% when farmers

Photo right:Under experimental conditions, the judicious use of small amounts of fertiliser with Gliricidia pushed yields up to 5.5 tonnes. This compared with just 1.1 tonnes on plots where maize was grown without Gliricidia or mineral fertiliser.

In areas with low or erratic rainfall, green fertilisers reduce the likelihood of crop failure

37

34

33

AN EVERGREEN REVOLUTION?

Farmers in Zambia get an average of about 1.1 tonnes of maize per hectare. Less than one in three uses mineral fertilisers, and over half fail to produce enough maize to sell in the market. Between 2002 and 2008, low soil fertility, drought and late planting led to a third of the area under maize being abandoned before it was harvested. However, not everybody fared badly, and some have been doing surprisingly well.

The dirt track that winds its way towards the homestead where Collens Mwinga lives with his wife and 10 children in Central Province runs between his farm and a neighbour’s. The maize in the fi elds belonging to the Mwinga family is almost 3 metres high; the plants are lush green, their large cobs almost ready to harvest. On the other side of the track, their neighbour’s maize is barely knee-high, and many of the plants have failed to produce any grain at all.

By adopting a number of relatively simple practices – collectively known as conservation agriculture – Collens has transformed his land and his life. “Before I began practising conservation agriculture,” he explains, “I would use eight bags of fertiliser a hectare, and I would harvest about 25 bags of maize, or 1.25 tonnes. Now I use half that amount of fertiliser and get over 8 tonnes a hectare.” In the past, his family had to buy food. Now they are self-suffi cient, with plenty left over to sell. They have used the profi ts from farming to buy oxen, iron sheets for their roof, a new kitchen unit, furniture and much else.

The Mwingas are among some 200 000 Zambian families to benefi t from the advice provided by the country’s Conservation Farming Unit. Under the no-nonsense leadership of Peter Aagard, a Kenyan farmer of Norwegian descent, the unit promotes

Photo left:Plenty to smile about. Collens Mwinga and his family.

34

practices that were fi rst developed in the United States to restore vast areas of land which had lost its topsoil during the 1930s. Deep ploughing and the clearance of vegetation had created the infamous ‘dust bowl’, whose social and environmental consequences were vividly described in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

There are three main principles behind conservation agriculture. First, the soil should be disturbed as little as possible. Secondly, farmers should always keep soil covered with organic matter, in the form of crops or crop residues. Thirdly, they should practise crop rotation, making good use of nitrogen-fi xing legumes such as cowpeas and beans.

Collens Mwinga may be an exception – his yields are as high as those achieved on most commercial farms – but farmers in Zambia who apply the principles of

conservation agriculture routinely get double or more than the average national yield. And they can get more still if they plant Faidherbia albida in their fi elds.

This unusual nitrogen-fi xing tree exhibits reverse phenology over much of its range: it loses its leaves at the onset of the rains and grows them during the dry season, which means it doesn’t compete for light with the crops beneath its canopy. One experiment conducted by the Conservation Farming Unit found that maize yields in the vicinity of Faidherbia trees averaged over 4 tonnes per hectare, compared to 1.3 tonnes beyond the tree canopy. Approximately 250 000 hectares of smallholder farmland in Zambia has recently been planted with Faidherbia, an activity strongly promoted by the Conservation Farming Unit and the Ministry of Agriculture.

35

According to Dennis Garrity, former Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre and now the UN Drylands Ambassador, Faidherbia is often a key component of a farming system described as ‘evergreen agriculture’, which involves planting annual food crops beneath a canopy of trees. During recent years, Dennis has tirelessly tramped across Africa, urging politicians to promote the practice. Nowhere, he believes, are its transformative powers more clearly seen than in Niger.

In Niger, Faidherbia trees help to increase crop yields.

38

37

RE-GREENING THE SAHEL

“If you’d come to Dan Saga in the early 1980s, you’d have seen how we were struggling,” says Ali Neino, a tall fi gure in a fl owing jalabiya. “Every year, we had to sow our crops three or four times because the wind would blow the seeds away.” This was a virtually treeless landscape and there was nothing to prevent the harmattan winds which blew across the Sahara from ripping away soil and seeds.

Then the villagers in this remote region in Niger began to notice something strange. “Many of the migrant workers didn’t have time to clean their fi elds when they returned to sow their crops,” says Ali. “And they did much better than us – they only had to sow their seeds once.” This was because the shoots which sprouted from underground roots – the remnants of an ancient forest cleared during the 1960s and 1970s – were protecting the soil. Those who lived

here permanently pruned them back to the ground, a practice encouraged by government advisers; the migrant workers didn’t do this.

This was the villagers’ fi rst experience of an agroforestry practice which became formalised over the coming years and is now known as farmer-managed natural regeneration. Instead of treating trees and bushes as imposters, farmers see them as an essential component of their production systems. As a result, they have more wood to sell, women spend less time gathering fi rewood, and there is more fodder for livestock. Farmer-managed natural regeneration has also led to a signifi cant increase in crop yields. Ali estimates that before the practice became widespread in Aguié Department, most farmers got about 150 kilograms of millet per hectare. Many now get over 500 kilograms – without using any mineral fertilisers.

Photo left:Thanks to the practice of farmer-managed natural regeneration, women in Dan Saga spend much less time collecting fuelwood than they used to.

38

Adam Toudou, a professor of agronomy at Niamey’s Université Abdou Moumouni, has been tracking the change to the landscape over several decades. He can remember visiting Aguié as a student in the early 1980s. “The only trees you’d see were very big trees, and there were very few of them,” he recalls. “It was one of the most degraded areas in southern Niger. Since then, it’s been completely transformed by the farmers.”

It was only when Gray Tappan of the United States Geological Survey compared high-resolution satellite photographs taken in 2005 and 2008 with imagery from earlier times that the true extent of re-greening became apparent. His research revealed that some 5 million hectares of once-degraded farmland now supported signifi cant levels of tree cover in Maradi and Zinder regions. This had nothing to do with the slight increases in rainfall over the past two decades.

Instead, changes in the forestry law and a series of projects – the fi rst led by a Christian missionary, Tony Rinaudo – encouraged farmers to allow the natural regeneration of underground roots.

Measuring the impact of natural regeneration is tricky. “It’s a very complicated system, with so many different variables,” says Frank Place of the World Agroforestry Centre. “There’s a huge variation in terms of the species you fi nd in farmers’ fi elds, the numbers of trees and their age.” Frank and his colleagues were able to measure these, but they had to rely on the testimony of farmers when it came to assessing crop yields. Farmers here do not think in terms of kilograms per hectare; rather they talk in terms of ‘measures’, frequently using buckets of different sizes.

Many of the villagers in Zinder say that when they grow millet or sorghum under Faidherbia, they get

“It was one of the most degraded areas in southern Niger. Since then, it’s been completely transformed by the farmers”Adam Toudou

39

far higher yields than when they grow these crops on open land. Jean-Marc Boffa, a French scientist who has devoted considerable time to investigating agroforestry practices in the Sahel, found that Faidherbia increased millet yields by 49–153% and sorghum yields by up to 169%.

Another long-term observer of events here, Chris Reij of the World Resources Institute, has calculated that farmer-managed natural regeneration has helped to increase the production of cereals by 500 000 tonnes per year, assuming an average increase in yield of 100 kilograms per hectare over 5 million hectares of re-greened land. In theory, this would be enough to satisfy the needs of 2.5 million people.

This story inspires hope. However, the gains made over recent years are threatened by rapid population growth. In 1950, the country’s population was about

two million. It is now 17 million, and the average woman in Niger has seven children during her lifetime. The population of Maradi Region was about 2.8 million in 2008. It is projected to double in less than 20 years.

“Farmer-managed natural regeneration is helping to buy time,” says Chris. “It is part of the solution – trees are the pillar of sustainable land use in these drylands – but it is not enough on its own. To keep pace with population growth, farmers will need to double their yields in the next 5 to 10 years.” This is only likely to happen if a number of practices are adopted, including farmer-managed natural regeneration, micro-dosing with mineral fertilisers, better water harvesting and the use of improved seeds.

42

41

TREES, WORMS, CENTIPEDES...

In the early 1990s, a project managed by the UN Food and

Agriculture Organization (FAO) helped farmers in Central

America to develop the Quesungual system of agroforestry

as an alternative to slash-and-burn farming, which was

leading to severe erosion and forest loss. Under the

Quesungual system, farmers selectively prune the trees

that are interspersed among their annual crops, leaving the

green matter as mulch that eventually decomposes and

becomes incorporated into the soil. The tallest trees are

retained as a source of fruit, timber and furniture wood.

They also provide some shade for the crops.

“Yields are higher and drought-induced crop losses

dramatically lower on farms that use this slash-and-

mulch system than on farms that don’t,” says Brazilian

soil scientist Edmundo Barrios. “We found a higher

concentration of biological activity, greater amounts of

carbon nutrients, and longer availability of water in soils

under the infl uence of trees than in fi elds without trees.”

Various studies have found that earthworms, centipedes

and millipedes are more than three, fi ve and six times more

abundant, respectively, under agroforestry systems than

they are in fi elds of annual crops without trees. Beatles, ants

and mites are also more plentiful. Besides acting as a refuge

for soil organisms, trees planted in farmers’ fi elds increase

the supply and availability of nutrients, improve soil structure

and control soil-borne pests and diseases.

Photo left:Ruby Saadou of Dan Saga village pruning Combretum glutinosum, a tree which helps to improve soil fertility.

Red-headed centipedes can grow up to 20 cm long, thriving in rich, damp environments.

42

THE ANSWER LIES IN THE SOIL

Until recently, it was hard to fi nd accurate information

about the state of Africa’s soils. Agricultural ministries, aid

agencies and scientists relied on relatively crude surveys

conducted many decades ago. But all this has changed,

thanks to a framework for measuring and monitoring soil

characteristics developed by the World Agroforestry Centre.

The Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS), supported by the

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has combined the use of

infrared spectroscopy with satellite imagery to analyse soil

health in over 60 ‘sentinel’ sites in 21 countries.

The project has produced reports on soil properties

for each of the sites, and these are providing valuable

guidance for extension agencies and agronomists on the

main constraints to plant growth. This is just the sort of

information required by those who wish to improve soil

health, and therefore farmers’ yields and incomes.

Among those benefi ting from the new techniques in

analysing soil health are pastoralists in Laikipia, in

northern Kenya. For a variety of reasons, many pastoralist

communities no longer move their cattle around, as their

ancestors did, and this has led to overgrazing and soil

erosion. Using the land health surveillance framework

developed at the World Agroforestry Centre, Tor-Gunnar

Vågen and his colleagues drew up detailed maps of

vegetation and soil carbon – the lower the carbon content,

the more degraded the land – and identifi ed hotspots of

degradation.

The maps are helping pastoralists to plan their grazing

regimens. “They are now experimenting with improved

management systems that mimic how wild herbivores move

across the land, grazing it without damaging the vegetation

and soil,” explains Tor. Pastoralists have also introduced the

practice of ‘kraaling’ on some degraded areas. This involves

retaining cattle within a stockade so that their manure

improves fertility and grass production.

43

Many farmers retain or grow Faidherbia albida in their fi elds, as the tree can help to improve soil fertility and crop yields.

44

Erosion in the hills surrounding Lake Tanganyika is not

just depriving farmers of fertile topsoil, it is leading to

sedimentation and nutrient enrichment in the lake itself. This

is threatening fi sh stocks and the livelihoods of communities

along the shoreline. Remote sensing has revealed that about

40% of the lake basin has lost some of its vegetation over

the past 30 years, and 5% has suffered serious degradation.

To tackle these problems, the Global Environment Facility

(GEF) funded a four-year programme to identify the worst-

affected areas and promote practices to control erosion and

improve local incomes. Emilie Smith Dumont, a scientist

at the World Agroforestry Centre, led the research in the

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). When she fi rst made

the arduous journey into the mountains in Kivu District, the

villagers were astonished to see her. “They hadn’t seen

a white person, or an educated Congolese, since 1953,”

she recalls. “They were so happy to see us, to fi nd that

somebody was interested in what was happening to them.”

On her fi rst visit, Emilie and Deodatus Kilola, a young

anthropologist, explored the changes that had taken place

in this remote – and, until recently, war-ravaged – region to

the west of Lake Tanganyika. An area once rich in forests

was now almost treeless. “There was scarcely a monkey to

be seen and nearly all the fruit trees had been felled,” says

Emilie. Poor agricultural practices and the cutting of trees

for charcoal – a source of income for the armed groups that

fl owed through the area during the 1990s – were among the

activities which had caused serious soil erosion.

Agricultural extension workers in Kivu District had always

concentrated their attention on the lowlands. They had

a reasonable knowledge of exotic trees, but knew little

FROM KIVU TO KOREA:

RESTORING BLIGHTED LANDSCAPES

Photo right:Emilie Smith Dumont, a scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre, with her research team in Kivu, DRC.

45

46

or nothing about the native species which grew at high

altitudes. This was hardly surprising, as the last tree survey

in the area had been done by botanists during the colonial

era. Fortunately, the villagers knew a great deal about native

trees, and had tentatively begun to develop some of their

own practices to regenerate degraded land.

Combining scientifi c knowledge with the information

gathered from the farmers, Emilie and her colleagues

developed an electronic tool which enables extension

workers and farmers to work out which species will prosper

in different locations. The Useful Trees for the Lake

Tanganyika Basin Toolkit was published in 2012, with user

guides and fi eld manuals for Tanzania and Zambia, as well

as the DRC. “Let’s say a farmer wants to grow trees which

provide timber but is also keen on getting honey,” says

Emilie. “Using the tool kit, he or she can identify which

species, suited to farm conditions, produces timber and

good forage for bees.”

When Emilie revisited Kivu in July 2012 she was delighted to

see that with the support of the World Wide Fund for Nature

(WWF) the local communities had established 27 nurseries

with a wide range of trees, including many native species.

Within a year, over two million trees had been planted in

erosion-prone areas and along riverbanks, and some 25 000

fruit trees had been distributed to farmers. This is helping to

transform the health of the villagers and their farmland.

47

BEYOND THE BAMBOO CURTAIN

The formal dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991 had

a devastating impact on North Korea. Deprived of Soviet

subsidies, agricultural production plummeted and hunger

spread across the countryside. In desperation, people

began to open up ‘sloping lands’ – 70% of North Korea

is mountainous – to grow food. The result was frequently

disastrous. Deforestation, combined with heavy rains and

poor farming practices, led to landslides and erosion.

In 2002, the Swiss Agency for Development and

Cooperation and North Korea’s Ministry of Land and

Environmental Protection launched a project to restore

degraded land in Suan County. This swiftly expanded

to neighbouring counties, and since 2007 the World

Agroforestry Centre has been providing training and

technical advice.

“Previously malnourished communities are now producing

their own trees and growing chestnuts, peaches, pears

and other fruits,” says Xu Jianchu, the Centre’s East Asia

Coordinator. “This has had a dramatic impact on people’s

lives, providing them with more food and a source of

income.” Jianchu believes the success of the project owes

much to the willingness of the authorities to acknowledge

the rights of communities to use the land, and to harvest

and sell their crops. This is a highly unusual state of affairs

in a country where the state has traditionally exercised –

and still does exercise – rigorous control over almost every

aspect of people’s lives.

50

49

A HEALTHYHARVEST

In 1997, Nelson Mkwaila was having trouble feeding his family. He could no longer afford mineral fertilisers and the soil on his farm in the rolling hill country between Blantyre and Zomba, in southern Malawi, was in poor condition. On the advice of the World Agroforestry Centre, he began to use fertiliser trees like Gliricidia in his maize fi elds; before long, his yields began to increase. Then, together with other members of his farmers’ group, he learned how to grow high-yielding fruit trees.

Today, almost every corner of Nelson’s farm which isn’t devoted to annual crops is planted with fruit. He has guava, peach, banana, apple, pawpaw and several other species. He sells some of the fruit at the local markets; the rest sustains his family. “Now that we have fruit for most of the year, I’ve noticed that my

CHAPTER 2

Photo left:Children picking cherries in Tajikistan.

health, and the health of my children, is much better than it used to be,” he says.

Eating fruit is one of the best – and if you’re a farmer, cheapest – ways of ensuring that you get enough vitamins to lead a healthy life. As many as one in three people in developing countries are affected by vitamin and mineral defi ciencies, or ‘hidden hunger’, and these are a major cause of disease. Take, for example, vitamin A. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 100–140 million children lack suffi cient vitamin A, and up to 500 000 become blind each year as a result. Of these, approximately half die within 12 months of losing their sight.

Hidden hunger is particularly severe in Africa, where fruit consumption is often low, despite the continent’s

50

wealth of indigenous fruit trees and the availability of exotic fruits. In East Africa, the average daily intake of fruit is 35 grams per person, according to WHO. In other parts of the continent the picture is mixed, with daily consumption per person ranging from a meagre 4 grams in Ethiopia to over 100 grams in Guinea. This compares with an average consumption of 110 grams for the developing world as a whole, and 210 grams for developed countries. “Growing fruit trees, and taking advantage of the wealth of indigenous trees, could be one of the best ways of improving people’s physical and fi nancial health,” says Ramni Jamnadass, who leads the World Agroforestry Centre’s tree domestication programme.

Eating fruit is one of the best ways of ensuring that you get enough vitamins to lead a healthy life

Nelson Mkwaila says his family are much healthier, now that they have plenty of fruit to eat.

51

FROM FOREST TO FARM

Indigenous fruit trees have always been important to the rural poor, particularly during food shortages, which is why their fruits are sometimes known as famine foods. A survey in Malawi and Zambia found that 40% of rural households rely on indigenous fruits to sustain them during the ‘hungry months’, when supplies in their granaries are exhausted and they are waiting for the next harvest. In the Miombo woodlands of eastern and southern Africa, local people routinely consume some 70 edible species of wild fruit. Across the continent, in Cameroon, rural communities eat the fruits and seeds of about 300 indigenous trees.

In the mid-1990s, scientists asked 6 000 farmers in Central Africa to rank local trees in order of importance. “We were startled by the results,” recalls Zac Tchoundjeu. “We were expecting people to

point to commercially important timber species like mahogany, but none of them did. What they valued most were indigenous fruit and nut trees, about which we knew very little.” These included African plum (Dacroydes edulis), bush mango (Irvingia gabonensis) and African nut (Ricinodendron heudelotii), which were common enough in the wild but almost unknown to science. The scientists realised that if these trees could be brought out of the forests and domesticated for use in farmers’ fi elds, much could be done to reduce malnutrition and improve incomes.

One of the architects of the domestication programme was Roger Leakey, then head of research at the World Agroforestry Centre and author of Living with the Trees of Life. “The last great round of crop domestication took place during the Green Revolution, which developed high-yielding varieties

52

of starchy staples such as rice, maize and wheat,” he says. “This new round of tree domestication could scarcely be more different.” Sparsely funded and largely ignored by agribusiness, the programme was more of a peasant revolution, with farmers and scientists working together to develop superior varieties of indigenous fruit and nut trees.

Domestication takes advantage of variations in the wild, which are often considerable. For example, the oil content of marula (Sclerocarya birrea) nuts – the basic ingredient in the liqueur Amarula – can vary from just 5 grams to over 50 grams. The numbers of fruit produced by ber (Ziziphus mauritiana), which is widely consumed in the Sahel and rich in vitamin C, can vary from less than 20 to more than 2 000 on a single tree. Some individual trees produce sour fruit; others of the same species produce sweet fruit. The

A sign of the times. The domestication of native fruit trees is helping to improve nutrition in Cameroon.

53

size of fruit can vary greatly too, with the largest African plums weighing 10 times more than the smallest.

The domestication programme in Cameroon began with an analysis of the traits most appreciated in the villages. Farmers said they wanted trees that produce lots of large, sweet fruit, start fruiting at an early age and are relatively small in height. The researchers then asked farmers to show them their favourite wild trees, and took cuttings which were used to establish young trees of these superior ‘accessions’ at research sites and nurseries. They also explored the best ways of vegetatively propagating superior trees, so that large numbers could be made swiftly available for planting on farms, and they trained farmers in techniques such as grafting.

Initially, many villagers viewed these techniques with suspicion. “People said this was white man’s witchcraft, and at fi rst they didn’t want anything to do with it,” says Florence Ayire, a member of a women’s group in Widikum village. However, they changed their mind once they saw how her grafted fruit trees – created by splicing material from a superior tree onto healthy rootstock raised from seed – fl ourished. “Now they all want to learn,” she says.

54

In 1998, there were just two farmer-run nurseries in Cameroon; now there are several hundred. Many are independent businesses, making signifi cant profi ts and providing suffi cient trees to transform the lives of tens of thousands of rural families.

If you’d come here 10 years ago, says Thaddeus Salah as he shows us round his nursery in north-west Cameroon, you would have seen real hunger and poverty. “Before the domestication programme, we didn’t have enough chop to eat.” It wasn’t just food – chop in pidgin English – that his family lacked; they couldn’t afford school fees, health care or even chairs for their dilapidated grass-thatch house.

Thaddeus estimates that he now earns fi ve times more than he did in the days before he learned how to identify the best fruit trees in the wild and propagate

them in the nursery he manages with his neighbours. His family now has “plenty chop” – the motto on the sign outside the nursery reads: FIGHT AGAINST THE STOMACH DEVIL – and he earns enough from the sale of indigenous fruit trees, and from the fruit on his farm, to pay school fees for four of his children. He has also been able to reroof his house with zinc sheets and buy a mobile phone.

During the past two decades, domestication programmes have encouraged farmers to plant superior varieties of indigenous fruit and nut trees in Cameroon, Gabon, DRC, Malawi, Zambia and several other African countries. However, much more needs to be done. Ramni Jamnadass and her colleagues have identifi ed a number of other species worthy of domestication. These include baobab (Adansonia digitata), whose vitamin C-rich fruit is used as a drink

THE FRUITS OF SUCCESS

Photo right:Kola nuts, a popular stimulant, for sale in a market in northern Ghana. This is one of several species to benefi t from domestication programmes.

55

58

57

and in soups, and desert date (Balanites aegyptiaca), the fl eshy pulp of which is popular in the Sahel. The US National Research Council has highlighted the potential of 24 wild fruit and nut species in Africa, including the splendidly named chocolate berry (Vitex spp), ebony fruit (Diospyros spp) and gingerbread plum (Chrysobalanaceae family).

Of course, developing superior varieties is one thing; encouraging effi cient production and creating viable markets is quite another. Farmers must learn how to manage the crops properly and how to store fruit after the harvest. Traders and small businesses need to develop reliable processing and packaging operations. For several of the species domesticated in Africa, this is beginning to happen, and increasing numbers of farmers – and consumers – will benefi t in future.

Traders and small businesses need to develop reliable processing and packaging operations

Photo left:An impromptu fruit market in rural Guinea.

58

MAKING THE MOST OF MANGOES

If you buy mango juice in a Kenyan supermarket, there’s

a good chance it will come from another country, despite

the fact that Kenya has the ideal environment for growing

the crop. Indeed, it could be a major export, providing

a signifi cant source of income for rural communities.

However, meagre investment and a lack of research and

development are conspiring against the widespread

adoption of high-yielding varieties.

During the 1970s, a German development worker, Jürgen

Griesbach, introduced dozens of exotic varieties from

other parts of the world. He established orchards on prison

farms, which had a plentiful supply of land and free labour;

the same varieties were later introduced to government

research stations. Some 40 years on, World Agroforestry

Centre scientist Katja Kehlenbeck and her colleague

Emanuela Rohde conducted a survey to fi nd out what had

happened to them.

What struck them most was not the number of varieties

grown in the prisons and on government research stations –

they identifi ed 50 – but the lack of documented knowledge

about most of them. There had been no systematic

research, or any attempt to develop new varieties, and

only half a dozen had been developed commercially and

grown on farms. This is a depressing story. If mangoes

have been so neglected in Kenya, what hope is there of

developing improved varieties of less commercially valuable

indigenous species like baobab and tamarind? These also

have the potential to improve the nutrition and incomes of

smallholders, particularly in drought-prone areas.

There is an urgent need for long-term research to establish

which varieties grow best in different conditions. Katja also

believes that a network of farmer-managed resource centres

with fruit tree nurseries – similar to those described on

pages 5 and 54 – could play a major role in developing high-

59

quality fruit production and improving nutrition and incomes

in remote areas. “I believe we could make the mango serve

as a model for other species by exploring the best ways of

getting high-quality seedlings of the appropriate varieties to

smallholders,” she says.

Countries like Kenya could make much better use of mangoes.

60

There is every reason to suppose that humans have made therapeutic use of the plant kingdom since the earliest times. Among the fi rst written records appear in a Chinese herbal, thought to be the work of Emperor Shen Nung, who lived approximately 5 000 years ago. An Egyptian papyrus, dating from 1500 BC, contains information about 850 plant medicines. Around the same time, Sanskrit writings in India provided details of the herbs used by Ayurvedic medicine.

Medicinal plants remain important for two main reasons. First, they are the basis of health care for billions of people in the developing world. Up to 80% of the populations in some African and Asian countries use herbal medicines. Secondly, plant material harvested in the wild provides the active ingredients for many modern drugs. For example, a quarter of the pharmaceutical products used in the

TREES AS THERAPY

United States are derived from compounds extracted from plants.

If you visit the market behind the New Bus Stand in Shinyanga, a town of approximately 100 000 people in northern Tanzania, you will come across dozens of stalls selling medicinal plant products. “The demand for herbal medicines is going up, and every day 30 to 40 clients come to buy my products,” explains Kassim Haruna Kuhangaika, the chairman of the local Association of Traditional Healers. He rummages among the seeds, branches, pods and powders displayed on his stall, explaining the use for each. Some concoctions are taken for sleeping sickness and malaria; others he prescribes for urinary tract infections, yellow fever and male impotence.

But do they work? Yes, says Kassim: if they didn’t, he would lose his clients. Chrispinus Rubanza, a

Photo right:The Edwin Smith papyrus. Written in hieratic script in ancient Egypt around 1600 BC, the text describes the examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of 48 types of medical problems in exquisite detail.

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scientist who has spent many years working in the region, agrees. “There’s no doubt in my mind that many of these herbal medicines are effective,” he says. In collaboration with scientists from Heidelberg University, Germany, Chrispinus has conducted tests on some 20 popular herbal medicines. They have found that several species contain active ingredients already used in conventional medicine.

“Traditional healers like these represent a very sound health-care system, especially for the poor in rural areas,” says Chrispinus, “but I’m concerned about the sustainability of supply.” In this part of Tanzania, the overharvesting of medicinal plants is leading to a signifi cant loss of many widely used species. This is a familiar story across much of East Africa.

In 2009, Stepha McMullin, an Irish scientist based at the World Agroforestry Centre’s headquarters in

Nairobi, conducted a detailed survey of the medicinal plant trade in Kenya. She focused on markets in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu, the largest cities in the country. The traders she interviewed buy and sell material harvested from 53 species of trees and shrubs. Some are bought and sold in relatively small quantities. However, others are traded in large volumes.

Most of the material comes from wild harvesting and the traders confi rmed that there had been a signifi cant decline in the availability of many species during the two years prior to the study. About a third cited overharvesting as the main reason. Among the most threatened species was Warburgia ugandensis, which is widely used in the treatment of malaria. The harvesting of its bark for medicinal use can kill the whole tree.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that many of these herbal medicines are effective”Chrispinus Rubanza

Photo left:Scientist Chrispinus Rubanza discusses herbal remedies with Kassim Haruna Kuhangaika, the chairman of the local Association of Traditional Healers in Shinyanga, Tanzania.

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PLAYING WITH FIRE

Approximately 2.4 billion people in developing countries

rely on wood, charcoal and animal dung for cooking and

heating. In Africa, 90% of the rural population use these

solid fuels, and they would be lost, or at least hungry,

without them. You cannot digest raw beans; it would be

dangerous to eat raw chicken or pork. In short, much of

the food we eat must be cooked.

While many types of fuelwood do the job they are supposed

to do without damaging human health, others pose – or

could pose – a serious health risk. Take Euclea divinorum,

whose local name in one part of southern Africa – ichitamuzi

– means ‘to split the family.’ Any use of the wood is

thought to lead to family arguments, so it is never used for

cooking. This is just as well, says ethno-botanist Anthony

Cunningham. “Not only does Euclea wood produce a lot of

smoke, it contains dipterenes that can have serious health

consequences when inhaled.”

Some tree species contain aromatic hydrocarbons that are

carcinogenic, and certain metal ions, released when wood

is burnt, can lead to eye cataracts. With cooking fuels

becoming more expensive, many poorer families fi nd they

can no longer afford to buy non-toxic fuelwood, and they

end up using whatever they can. One way of tackling this

problem is through the cultivation of trees that produce

good fuelwood. This agroforestry practice is doing much to

improve the welfare and health of many rural communities.

Photo right:In arid parts of India, many villagers use crop roots as cooking fuel. A carbon and livelihoods project managed by the World Agroforestry Centre is helping villagers to reduce their consumption of fuelwood.

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None of Stepha’s fi ndings came as a surprise to Najma Dharani, an ecologist who has devoted much of her professional life to researching the use of medicinal plants in East Africa, especially by the cattle-herding pastoralists in the arid savannas. Her interest dates back to her childhood in Pakistan, when her mother used herbal medicines – never antibiotics – to tackle a range of diseases and ailments. “When I get malaria now, I don’t go to the chemist,” says Najma, who now works as a consultant to the World Agroforestry Centre. “I take a concoction made from Xanthoxylum bark, and it always works well.”

Najma is the lead author of Common Antimalarial Trees and Shrubs in East Africa, which describes the fi ndings of a project involving the World Agroforestry Centre, the Kenya Medical Research Institute and traditional medicinal practitioners. The book provides

THE BATTLE WITH MALARIA

a fascinating account of the ecology, use and active ingredients of 22 plants which are commonly used in the treatment of malaria, which kills an estimated 800 000 people a year. The majority of those who die in Africa are children. In 2007, less than 10% of African children under the age of fi ve affected by malaria received modern artemisinin-based combination therapies; the rest were treated with traditional remedies or not at all.

There are considerable gaps in knowledge about medicinal plants and their properties. Najma cites the example of Xanthoxylum, a genus which contains chemical compounds that show strong anti-malarial activity. “They also have the potential to treat other diseases, yet relatively little research has been done on this group of trees,” she says. She believes pharmaceutical companies and national and

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international donors should provide much more support for scientifi c research on medicinal trees and plants. This is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.

Najma now spends much of her time on the road – her husband acts as driver and translator – working with pastoralist communities like the Maasai, Samburu and Turkana. Although some of the young herders want a quick curative fi x and frequently opt for modern drugs, especially for their livestock, there is still a strong demand for traditional herbal medicines. However, overharvesting and habitat loss threatens the survival of many important species.

“I’ve been training local communities how to establish nurseries and encouraging them to plant medicinal trees, including anti-malarial trees, on their land,” says Najma. “But this alone isn’t enough.” The survival of

many important medicinal species will only be assured if pressure is taken off wild populations. Among other things, this means establishing domestication programmes similar to those described earlier in this chapter. One of the few medicinal trees undergoing domestication is the African cherry (Prunus africana), whose bark provides compounds which are used in the treatment of benign prostate cancer. Much more needs to be done; and it must be done quickly if we are not to lose trees which could be a precious source of medicines in the future.

A female Anopheles albimanus mosquito feeding on a human host and engorged with blood.

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If you visit Belén market in Iquitos, a Peruvian city some

3 600 km up the Amazon River, you’ll get a colourful and at

times pungent insight into the local fauna and fl ora. There

are stalls selling eviscerated turtles and deer, wild pigs and

rats, live spider monkeys and sloths, a great variety of river

fi sh and a dozen or more wild fruits, the choice of which

varies according to the time of year. In March, for example,

you will see piles of cupuaçu (Theobroma grandifl orum)

and macambo (Theobroma bicolor), the orange, maroon

and golden fruits harvested from aguaje (Mauritia fl exuosa)

and peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), and cherry-like camu-

camu (Myrciaria dubia).

These are just a fraction of the many fruits – indigenous

people are said to use over 190 species – which are found in

Loreto Region. Some have been successfully domesticated,

yet agroforestry here remains in its infancy. There are

two main reasons for this. Firstly, there is no tradition of

establishing commercial tree crops; secondly, while there

has been signifi cant research on domesticating a small

number of species, little effort has gone into developing

stable markets for their products.

Most of the people who have settled around Iquitos make

a living from fi shing, hunting and collecting forest products.

Agriculture is little more than a means of growing suffi cient

food for the family; few treat it as a commercial proposition.

This is not to say that they have no interest in planting trees.

“Many do plant trees on their smallholdings,” says Agustin

Gonzales, a scientist with the Peruvian Amazon Research

Institute (IIAP), “but they are used to exploiting many

different varieties in the forests, and they aren’t interested in

planting large numbers of just a few species.”

Agustin leads us along a slithery track and over a fence into

a densely wooded smallholding with a shack on stilts. Here

we fi nd Adalberto Mitidieri, who cheerfully shows us round

his 5 hectare plot, where he grows some 30 species of fruit

tree. He reckons about 25 are native, gathered as wildings

or grown from seed. We ask how much of the fruit he sells.

None, he replies: this is just for his family.

Agustin fi rst began to take an interest in agroforestry in

the 1980s. At that time, large numbers of migrants were

arriving in Amazonia, clearing forest and planting annual

MAKING THE MOST OF AMAZONIA’S FRUIT TREES

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Agustin Gonzales, a scientist at the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute (right), with Adalberto Mitidieri on the latter’s smallholding near Iquitos.

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species, including aguaje, macambo, peach palm and

camu-camu, and they are now encouraging farmers like

Adalberto to plant these as agroforestry crops. So far, the

programmes have had limited success.

“We’ve developed good agronomic packages for several

species, but there’s a huge gap between the domestication

of indigenous fruits and their commercialisation,” says

Agustin. “Because the markets haven’t been properly

researched and developed, prices for many of the fruits

have remained low, which means that farmers easily lose

interest.”

MARKETING MATTERS

In an ideal world, camu-camu, a shrub that grows on the

seasonally fl ooded land beside the Amazon, would by

now have become a worldwide success like açai (Euterpe

oleracea), whose juice is promoted as a source of energy.

crops like rice. “After a year or two, they realised that they’d

exhausted the soils, and their rice yields plummeted,” he

recalls. “They used to ask us what crops they should grow

next. That’s when my colleagues and I began experimenting

with indigenous fruit trees.”

The scientists established a domestication programme

for indigenous fruit trees at IIAP’s research stations. They

developed high-yielding varieties of a small number of

Camu-camu fruits contain up to 30 times more vitamin C than oranges.

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Açai went from being an indigenous staple in the lower

reaches of the Brazilian Amazon in the 1970s to a fashion

food in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro by the 1990s.

Nowadays, you can fi nd açai juice in McDonald’s in Brazil

and in supermarkets in Europe. Not so camu-camu.

“If you’d put these two species at the starting line at the

same time, who’d have thought that the one that tastes

like cabbage, açai, would be the winner?” asks Jonathan

Cornelius, the World Agroforestry Centre’s regional

coordinator for Latin America. Syrup is sometimes used

to disguise the strange taste of açai, whereas camu-

camu juice, with its distinctive raspberry fl avour, requires

sweetening but no disguise. Furthermore – and this should

be a strong selling point – camu-camu fruits contain up to

30 times more vitamin C than oranges.

According to IIAP scientist Mario Pinedo, several factors

have led to camu-camu’s up-and-down history. “I think there

has been too much emphasis on developing export markets,

and not enough effort on developing local markets here in

Iquitos, where many of the farmers and harvesters are, and

domestic markets elsewhere in Peru,” he says.

Producers in the region are now very frustrated, as many

of them have planted a shrub which has failed to provide

them with the profi ts they expected. “One of the problems

is that most research has focused on agronomic issues and

processing, and we’ve neglected the marketing side,” says

Mario.

There are several reasons which help to explain açai’s

success. Unlike camu-camu, the fruit has long been used by

indigenous people, and açai became a major success when

it was featured in a Brazilian TV soap opera. The chances

of camu-camu being promoted on this scale may be slight,

but much could be done to develop and create a more

stable market. This would go a long way towards ensuring

the success of an agroforestry practice which could benefi t

tens of thousands of farmers in the Peruvian Amazon, and

provide an environmentally benign alternative to slash-and-

burn agriculture and cattle ranching.

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A WEALTH OF OPPORTUNITIES

The cultivation of tree crops has shaped the landscape of large chunks of the planet between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. It is impossible to imagine Sri Lanka without coconuts, Ghana without cocoa, Malaysia without oil palm, Costa Rica without coffee, and Sumatra without rubber. Coffee and coconut both occupy over 10 million hectares of land, equivalent to the size of Hungary. Approximately 8 million hectares are devoted to cocoa and some 7 million hectares to rubber. Coconut is grown commercially in over 80 countries, cocoa in over 60, and coffee in over 50. Coffee is now second only to oil in terms of its value on the international commodity market. This is big business with a big footprint.

Leaving aside oil palm, which is often grown on anindustrial scale, 80–95% of tree crop productioncomes from smallholder and family farms. There are approximately 26 million small-scale coffee producers

CHAPTER 3

and 4.5 million cocoa growers. If you add their dependents, they are providing the means of survivalfor 150 million people or more.

Tree crops can be grown as monocultures – the perennial equivalent to a fi eld of wheat or potatoes – and this practice is frequently encouraged by governments and industry. This is the green revolution approach, capable of producing high yields, but only if farmers can afford to use suffi cient quantities of fertilisers, pesticides and other inputs. Many cannot. Fortunately, there is another way of doing things. This involves cultivating crops such as coffee and cocoa together with a range of other tree species. These agroforestry systems have many advantages. They provide farmers with a portfolio of different products, both to sell and consume, they protect soils and water systems, and they often support high levels of biodiversity.

Photo left:Picking coffee in Llano Bonito, Costa Rica. Six hundred coffee farmers in this area are members of the Coopellano Bonito Cooperative, enabling them to get a better price for their coffee.

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One of the fi rst things to strike a visitor to Central America is the wooded nature of the landscape. Over half of the farmland has more than 30% tree cover. “We’ve got a lot of different agroforestry systems here,” explains John Beer, director of research at the Center for Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education (CATIE) in Turrialba, Costa Rica. “Some are traditional systems developed by the Indians. And some were imported by the Spanish colonialists.” The former include home gardens and living fences. The latter include silvopastoral systems, where cattle graze in fi elds studded with trees.

One of the most important agroforestry systems in the region, and the focus of intensive study by CATIE, involves the growing of cocoa and coffee with shade trees. The wild ancestors of Theobroma cacoa and Coffea arabica grew as an understory in forest, in

Latin America and Ethiopia, respectively. So it made sense for farmers in this part of the world to provide similar conditions by growing crops under a canopy of taller trees. However, in a quest to increase crop yields, farmers were increasingly encouraged to grow coffee in full sun during the latter part of the 20th century.

“Planting coffee in full sunlight can lead to signifi cantly higher yields, providing farmers supply the crops with lots of nutrients,” says Eduardo Somarriba, a tree crops expert at CATIE. “But if farmers can’t afford to buy suffi cient mineral fertilisers – and many can’t, especially when commodity prices are low – they end up with serious problems.” Their crops become more susceptible to disease; the soils become progressively more impoverished; yields decline.

THE VIRTUES OF SHADE

Photo left: Scale matters. In Papua, Indonesia, large areas of forest have been cleared to make way for industrial oil palm plantations, depriving indigenous people like the Mooi of their ancestral lands.

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During the 1980s and 1990s, scientists from CATIE and the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) began to build a compelling case for the traditional practice of using shade trees. They were able to show that shade trees help to reduce extremes in temperature by as much as 5°C. Some produce leaf litter and pruning residues which contain up to 340 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare per year. In certain situations, although the opposite sometimes applies, shade trees can help to control pests and diseases, and the litter from shade trees can reduce soil erosion on steep slopes. Farmers who plant shade trees can also make money from the sale of timber and fruit. Furthermore, coffee plants live longer and remain commercially productive for longer when grown under shade.

For many years, those in positions of infl uence ignored these fi ndings. “Then much to our surprise, at a conference in 1997, a representative of the Instituto del Café de Costa Rica (ICAFE) announced that they were going to change their focus, and encourage the judicious use of shade,” recalls John Beer. “It had taken us a long time to convince them of the benefi ts, but we got there in the end.” It is estimated that nearly 3 million hectares of coffee are now cultivated under shade in Latin America. Approximately 70% of coffee is grown under shade in Costa Rica and 90% in the remaining Central American countries. This compares to 60% in Colombia, but only 10% in Brazil, which is the major producer on the continent.

During recent years, CATIE has collaborated with CIRAD, the World Agroforestry Centre and the

Photo right:Much of the coffee in Nicaragua is grown under a canopy of shade.

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University of Bangalore on a major coffee research programme in Latin America, Africa and India. One of the projects managed by the Coffee Agroforestry Network (CAFNET) examined the infl uence of shade trees on 50 smallholdings in Kivu, Rwanda. At each, the researchers studied the performance of four randomly chosen coffee bushes under shade and four growing in full sun.

Under shade, the mean harvest of coffee cherries over the three-year research period was 9.6 kilograms per bush, compared to 7.1 kilograms in full sun. “You only had to look at the coffee under shade to see it was in better condition,” says CIRAD coffee expert Fabrice Pinard. “The leaves were greener and more plentiful.”

So why hadn’t farmers planted more trees if it was obvious that shade was benefi cial? The answer is

partly political. When the government of Rwanda fi rst began to promote intensive systems of production, farmers were forbidden from planting trees in their coffee gardens. Fortunately, the advisory services now recognise the virtues of providing shade and they are actively promoting tree-planting. The research project was able to provide guidance about which trees work best. Leguminous species help to improve soil fertility, while avocado and a local fi g seem to stimulate coffee production.

Approximately 70% of coffee is grown under shade in Costa Rica and 90% in the remaining Central American countries

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Twenty-year-old Yursi tends cocoa seedlings at the Forsaka nursery in Jalin village, Ache, Indonesia.

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In 2012, the French scientist Philippe Vaast returned to the Côte d’Ivoire after an absence of some 30 years. “I was astonished by the changes which had taken place,” he recalls. “When I was last there, in the 1980s, the Bas-Sassandra Region was covered with dense primary forest. Now it’s nearly all been replaced by perennial tree crops.”

From the 1980s onwards, there was a massive wave of migration from other regions in the country, as well as Burkina Faso and Mali, towards the west, with the newcomers clearing forest to make way for cocoa, coffee, oil palm and rubber. The conventional wisdom was that cocoa grew best in full sun, and this was a practice encouraged by the government. “Initially, farmers got decent yields, but as many couldn’t afford to buy fertilisers, the soils progressively became poorer and yields declined,” says Philippe, who leads the World Agroforestry Centre’s research on multi-strata tree crop systems.

For several years, the cocoa industry in Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s largest producer, had been in a state of crisis. Most of the cocoa farms were old, many were disease-ridden, and average yields had fallen to about 400 kilograms per hectare – well under half the potential of a well-managed cocoa garden. To improve productivity and the welfare of cocoa farmers, the World Agroforestry Centre and Mars Inc, one of the world’s largest chocolate producers, launched a major public–private partnership, known as Vision for Change (V4C), in 2010. The project aims to increase yields, primarily by rehabilitating old cocoa gardens using high-yielding varieties and introducing a package of ‘good agricultural practices’, such as good sanitation, frequent harvesting, and the use of fertilisers and the appropriate insecticides.

By the end of 2012, the project had made considerable progress. Thirteen Cocoa Development Centres were providing technical advice to 10 000 smallholder

COCOA FUTURES

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farmers, and the project had established a new laboratory to conduct research on the mass propagation of elite cocoa clones, using modern tissue culture techniques. Farmers who had begun to lose faith in cocoa were now adopting the practices promoted by V4C. “Before the project came, many of the people here were replacing their cocoa with rubber,” says Koné Backary, a village chief. “But once they could see the possibility of restoring their cocoa gardens and increasing their yields, they stopped doing that.”

The project is primarily about increasing productivity. However, Philippe Vaast believes that as well as adopting the practices promoted by V4C, farmers should be encouraged to plant native species in their cocoa gardens. There is plenty of evidence to show that this is the best way of reducing heat stress on cocoa plants. This will be a key consideration in the future, as climate predictions anticipate a 1°C rise in temperature

by 2030 and a 2.3°C rise by 2050 in this part of Africa.

But are farmers here interested in growing trees on their cocoa gardens? Surveys conducted by Emilie Smith Dumont suggest they are. With the help of local scientists, she interviewed 355 farmers in Bas-Sassandra. Despite the massive levels of deforestation, the farmers were able to identify 139 species growing on their land. About 95% were enthusiastic about the idea of planting native species. These could provide them with a range of products, including fruit and timber. The farmers also told Emilie that the trees could help to improve soil fertility and reduce heat stress.

“A lot of people in the cocoa industry still believe that ‘full sun’ cocoa is the way forward – just as the coffee industry maintained that ‘full sun’ coffee was

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the best system until relatively recently,” says Fergus Sinclair, who oversees the World Agroforestry Centre’s research on trees on farms. “What’s exciting about Emilie’s research is that it shows that farmers in Côte d’Ivoire understand the importance of mixing their cocoa with other trees, even though this goes against much of the advice they have received.”

When the V4C project was fi rst proposed, some farmers suspected that Mars and its partners wanted to increase production in order to reduce prices. “We had to convince them that this wasn’t the case,” says Tony Simons, Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre. At present, farmers have an average of 3 hectares each, with yields of about 400 kilograms per hectare. “If we can push yields up to 1 000 kilograms per hectare, then farmers could produce the same amount of cocoa on just over a third of their land. They could then devote the rest of their land to timber, fruit and other crops.”

Photo right:Christophe Kouame (left), manager of the V4C project in Côte d’Ivoire, in cocoa gardens near Soubré.

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For many years, a factory in Ghana managed by Lever Brothers, a subsidiary of Unilever, produced a cheap ‘sink soap’ for the local market using scrap palm oil, the residue left from the process of making the premium brands. However, by 2000 the factory was making such a good job of using its scrap oil that there wasn’t enough left to make sink soap. Harrie Hendrickx, the development manager at the time, asked his staff to send word around the local villages: if you’ve got any vegetable oils you’d like to sell, we’ll consider buying them. That way, the factory could continue to produce sink soap and the villagers could earn some money. “Before long, we started receiving a white vegetable fat,” recalls Harrie, “and we managed to make a very nice soap with it.”

The fat, derived from trees of the Allanblackia genus, had long been used for cooking by local people across a great swathe of Africa. Allanblackia trees have

other uses too. They are valued for their medicinal properties and appreciated by hunters as their nutritious fruits attract wildlife, hence local names such as giant rats’ nuts and elephants’ porridge.

It was only after a sample had been sent for analysis at Unilever’s R&D Division in Holland that Allanblackia oil’s real potential was recognised. The oil consists almost entirely of stearic and oleic acids and has a very sharp melting point, around 34°C. This means it remains solid at room temperature, but melts in the mouth, which is precisely what is required of a spread like margarine. Unlike palm oil, it doesn’t need any further modifi cation. This reduces the number of processing steps. Unilever was so impressed that it decided to switch a signifi cant portion of its white fat production to Allanblackia oil. All that was needed now was a regular – and very large – supply.

GREEN OIL

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It soon became apparent that there weren’t nearly enough trees in the wild to satisfy demand, and that the inventories made by Unilever and its research partners had been wildly optimistic. The fi rst commercial harvest took place in Tanzania in 2004, and yielded just 4 tonnes. By early 2004, all expectations about existing stocks of Allanblackia being able to meet the demands of the market had been shattered. It was now clear that Allanblackia would need to be brought out of the forests and onto farmers’ fi elds.

Over the course of the next decade, the Novella Project, a public–private partnership involving Unilever, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), the World Agroforestry Centre and local partners in several countries, gradually

Yaw Obeng, a farmer in Agyei Krom, Ghana, with Allanblackia seeds.

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established Allanblackia as a domestic crop, using practices described in chapter 2 for indigenous fruit trees, and developed supply chains linking farmers in Africa with buyers in Europe. In 2008, Unilever withdrew from the management of national supply chains, handing responsibility to three local companies in Ghana, Tanzania and Nigeria.

The Novella partners are hoping to achieve production levels of 10 000 tonnes of oil by around 2020 and 60 000 tonnes by 2030. This will involve some 40 000 farmers and the planting of eight million high-yielding Allanblackia trees. In 2007, SNV calculated that the net annual cash benefi t per hectare could work out at US$134 for Allanblackia, compared to US$129 for cocoa and US$59 for oil palm. However, the partners are not suggesting that farmers should grow Allanblackia as a single-species crop; rather, they

The Novella Project has benefi ted from the partnership between the public and private sectors.

87

should see it as part of a more complex agroforestry system.

Allanblackia is already helping to improve the incomes of many thousands of small-scale farmers. The timing of the harvest – the trees fruit between January and April – is proving to be of particular importance in Tanzania. One of the most diffi cult times for people on low and erratic incomes is the end of the year. “Many people have spent all their money on Christmas, leaving them little or nothing for the weeks and months which follow,” explains Moses Munjuga, a scientist from the World Agroforestry Centre who has worked closely with farmers in the East Usambara Mountains.

Talk to any of the people who harvest Allanblackia seeds, and they will tell you much the same story. The

extra cash during the fi rst few months of the year means they can buy food if they are short of food, pay school fees for their children and purchase items they couldn’t afford in the past. This explains why so many harvesters are keen to plant Allanblackia trees on their farms, even though it will be several years before they see the benefi t.

In Ghana, Allanblackia provides extra income when many farmers have no other crops to sell. It is also proving to be the ideal crop to plant with cocoa. “I could immediately see that it would fi t in very well with my cocoa crop,” explains Kofi Abijye as he leads us around his farm, pointing out grafted Allanblackia saplings. “I harvest my cocoa between June and December, and once the Allanblackia is mature, I will be able to harvest its seeds from January through to April.”

In Ghana, Allanblackia provides extra income when many farmers have no other crops to sell

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Between them, Kofi ’s cocoa and Allanblackia trees will guarantee a steady income for 10 months a year. While his Allanblackia trees are growing, the cocoa trees provide the shade they need to thrive; when they are fully grown, they will act as shade trees for his cocoa. This is the botanical equivalent of a marriage made in heaven. Or, as Kofi puts it, “I will get double the amount of benefi t for the same amount of work.”

One justifi cation for conserving tropical forests, which contain about 60% of terrestrial biodiversity, is utilitarian. They possess tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of species for which future generations may fi nd a use, for example as foodstuffs or medicines. However, the road from discovery to the marketplace can be a rocky one, requiring time, ingenuity and considerable investment, as the Allanblackia story illustrates.

The Novella Project provides a model for the development of products harvested from the wild and domesticated for commercial purposes. Its success owes much to the collaboration between a multinational company, environmental and social non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local marketing organisations and an international research institute. Unilever has played a particularly important role. It invested over US$10 million in developing the supply chain and made a specifi c commitment to purchase oil from seeds grown by smallholders. Its commitments to high standards of sustainability and fairness were recognised in 2010, when it received an innovation award from the Union for Ethical BioTrade.

Photo left:An Allanblackia fruit, sacks of seeds and a pan of Allanblackia fat, used for cooking in many villages.

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SEEING IS BELIEVING IN INDONESIA

In 2007, fi eld staff working for Mars Inc in South

Sulawesi, Indonesia, suggested to 25-year-old Muis

Samsuddin that he should set up a nursery and

learn how to grow high-yielding varieties of cocoa.

Not only would this help to improve the quantity

and quality of cocoa grown around his village,

but it might also encourage Muis to sort out his

life. At fi rst, he wasn’t interested. “I couldn’t see

the benefi t, and in any case I was busy with my

motorbike gang and other matters,” he says drily.

One day his father asked him to buy some cocoa

seedlings from a demonstration plot established

by Mars in a nearby village. Soon, these were

performing better than the family’s old cocoa trees.

Muis was impressed: he could now see there

was good money to be made in cocoa and he accepted a

further offer of training from Mars. He is now a village cocoa

doctor managing a Village Cocoa Clinic (VCC). He sells

seedlings which are improving local yields and incomes. He

also trains farmers how to graft high-yielding varieties onto

old, unproductive cocoa trees. Before long, he had made

enough money from his nursery to renovate the small house

where he lives with his wife and young children; he also

enrolled part-time for an agricultural course at a

local university.

By the end of 2010, there were over 20 village cocoa

doctors in Indonesia, part of a network of expertise

established and nurtured by Mars and its partners. “The

VCCs are businesses in their own right, providing an

income for the farmers who run them,” explains Mars fi eld

91

coordinator Hussin bin Purung, who has played a leading

role in developing grafting techniques and management

practices to rehabilitate old cocoa gardens. “But they are

also superb demonstration sites where farmers can see best

practice, buy superior varieties and get advice.”

Hussin estimates that each village cocoa doctor serves up

to 170 farmers. Such has been their success and infl uence

that other organisations, including Swisscontact and Mercy

Corps, have adopted the model elsewhere in Indonesia.

Village cocoa doctors like Muis Samsuddin are helping to transform cocoa farming in Sulawesi.

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If a farmer plants a variety of wheat or maize which fails

to live up to its promise, he may see this as a year wasted

– but at least it is just one year. Next year, he will plant a

different variety. But just imagine if he planted the seeds or

seedlings of fruit trees which failed to perform as he hoped.

It wouldn’t be a matter of waiting just one year; it could be

eight or nine before he realised he had chosen poor-quality

planting material or the wrong variety. That is eight or nine

years wasted. This is precisely what is happening to tens of

millions of farmers around the world.

Over the past two decades, the World Agroforestry Centre

and Forest & Landscape Denmark (FLD) have conducted

research on tree seeds and seedlings supply systems to

establish why they frequently work ineffectively, and what

could be done to improve them.

Although some government tree seed centres operate

effi ciently when it comes to supplying the public sector

with tree seedlings, they probably only reach about 10%

THE SEEDS OF SUCCESS

Photo right:Quality matters. Women in Ethiopia plant seedlings at a community tree nursery funded by the British tea company Taylors of Harrogate.

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The experience in Aceh, Indonesia, is instructive. Two

years after the devastating tsunami of 2004, the World

Agroforestry Centre launched the ‘nurseries of excellence’

programme. Its aim was to help farmers establish nurseries

with high-quality rubber, cocoa, timber and fruit seedlings.

The nurseries which fared best were those that received

comprehensive training in a range of techniques and

practices, and had access to good-quality planting material.

In Aceh, group-managed nurseries tended to last for a few

years, to be superseded by private nurseries, many of which

continue to fl ourish. Much the same has happened in East

Africa. Between 1997 and 2004, the World Agroforestry

Centre worked with 62 nurseries, 35 of which were run by

groups and 27 of which were private, around the town of

Meru. By 2006, just two group nurseries remained, whereas

22 private nurseries were still functioning. As in Aceh, the

ones which fared best had received training in nursery

management and were able to procure high-quality seeds

and seedlings.

of smallholder farmers. “This is a major drawback of

centralised, government-controlled seed supply systems,”

says Jens-Peter Barnekow Lillesø of FLD. Furthermore,

there is frequently a confl ict of interest, as government seed

centres may support and promote legislation which benefi ts

their own businesses and hinders the development of the

private sector.

The private sector is also undermined by the behaviour of

many NGOs. All too often, NGOs distribute seedlings at

subsidised cost, or even free of charge. But that’s not the

only problem. “The vast majority of NGOs pay little attention

to the issue of quality,” says Jens-Peter. “They think in terms

of distributing 100 000 trees – not 100 000 high-quality

trees.”

Research by Jens-Peter and his colleagues suggests that

governments need to create the environment in which

entrepreneurs can fl ourish, and ensure that nursery owners

receive adequate training and access to the best seeds and

planting material.

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The research suggests that farmers would be best served

by a commercially oriented, decentralised system which

provides high-quality seeds and seedlings at an affordable

price. If that’s to happen, there will need to be a major

rethink about the role of the state and civil society. National

tree seed centres should become knowledge brokers,

providing technical information to entrepreneurs and

producers about every aspect of seed quality, production

and procurement. The business of selling seeds should be

left to the private sector.

Small-scale entrepreneurs could play a more prominent part

in promoting high standards of agroforestry if disincentives

– such as unfair competition from NGOs – were removed.

NGOs should be encouraged to support the private sector,

for example by providing business training to seed dealers,

and by buying seedlings from entrepreneurs. They should

be discouraged from establishing and running their own

nurseries and providing low-cost – and frequently poor-

quality – planting materials to farmers.

A government seed orchard in Meru, Kenya.

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SUSTAINING OUR LIVESTOCK

Many wild herbivores eat more than the grass and greenery at their feet. In Europe and North America, the presence of a horizontal browse line on the trees is one of the best indicators of deer; its height even gives an indication of which species are present. Likewise, in Africa’s wooded savannas a whole range of herbivores, from gazelle to giraffe, eland to elephant, gain a signifi cant portion of their nutrition by browsing on trees and bushes.

In many parts the world, domestic livestock do much the same. The grazing of livestock under a scattered canopy of trees is particularly important in arid regions in Latin America and Africa, and the leaves, twigs, pods and fruits of trees and shrubs may account for up to four-fi fths of the fodder available for livestock in some of the driest areas. One estimate suggests that trees are vitally important as a source of

CHAPTER 4

fodder for 30–40 million pastoralists, the guardians of some 4 000 million cattle, goats and sheep.

While some farmers allow their free-ranging livestock to browse the available shrubs and trees, others – especially dairy farmers – use a practice known as ‘cut-and-carry’. They harvest leaves and feed them to their livestock, which are kept in stalls or enclosures close to their homesteads. This practice has been going on for centuries, but it was only in the 1980s and 1990s that scientists began to conduct detailed research on how best to use fodder trees to improve the productivity of dairy animals.

Both these agroforestry practices – silvopastoralism and cut-and-carry – deliver a wide range of benefi ts. Trees in rangelands frequently play an important role in conserving soils, regulating water supplies

Photo left:A goatherd chops down fodder for her livestock in Rajasthan, India.

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and supporting biodiversity. They also provide local communities with timber and other materials. The cut-and-carry fodder systems favoured by dairy farmers not only provide livestock with a rich source of protein, but also help to improve soil fertility and raise crop – as well as milk – yields.

Photo right:During the dry season, many farmers in Shinyanga, Tanzania, use woodland fodder to sustain their livestock.

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A survey in Costa Rica and Nicaragua found that 90% of farmers retained trees on their pastures as a source of fodder, and over half used trees as living fences. The densities varied considerably, with some farmers having as few as nine trees per hectare and others over 50. Besides providing livestock with shade and nutrition, the trees provided farmers with timber and fresh fruit, and increased the resilience of the landscape during times of drought.

A study in Colombia, conducted by Yasmin Cajas-Giron and Fergus Sinclair of the World Agroforestry Centre, focused on the use of trees on 54 farms in the Caribbean Region. They found that the tallest trees provided shade and timber. The most important fodder trees were of medium stature. These produced fruits or pods, while other species were managed as shrubs to produce green leaf fodder. Once again,

the density of trees varied, from fewer than three per hectare to more than 50, with the greater densities being found in dry areas of low soil fertility where cattle were used to provide both milk and meat. Here, as in many other studies, scientists found that farmers had a detailed knowledge about the benefi ts trees can provide for their animals, and that they deliberately encouraged their growth.

Research conducted in Nicaragua by Fergus Sinclair and another colleague, Sonia Ospina, provides an insight into why farmers in Central America retain trees and shrubs on their pastures. In this instance, the scientists compared the productivity of semi-natural grasslands with sown pastures. “Farmers and rural advisers assume that replacing semi-natural grassland with sown pasture will result in more feed for their cattle,” says Fergus. “However, we found that

THE WOODED RANGELANDS

Photo right:Like many of his fellow farmers in Nicaragua, Félix López grazes his cattle in wooded pasture. His story is told at the end of this chapter.

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when you track productivity throughout the whole year, the higher productivity of sown pastures in the rainy season is offset by lower productivity in the dry season.”

Farmers can conserve the rainy season’s surplus production from sown pastures by making hay or silage. But this requires considerable labour and involves various other costs. In any case, to get the best out of sown pastures, farmers need to use fertilisers and irrigation, practices which are uncommon in Nicaragua. “So, all in all, what our research shows is that the widespread replacement of grassland by sown pasture is of questionable value in terms of improving the quality of feed available for cattle,” says Fergus. “Neither sown pastures nor grasslands are productive at the end of the dry season, which explains why farmers typically retain trees and

shrubs in their pastures.” These provide the cattle with sustenance at a time when there is little or no grass.

A survey in Costa Rica and Nicaragua found that 90% of farmers retained trees on their pastures as a source of fodder

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A century ago, the Shinyanga Region in northern Tanzania was extensively wooded. The Sukuma agro-pastoralists who lived there made good use of the trees, both as a source of fodder for their livestock and food and fuel for themselves. However, the woodlands acted as a reservoir for the tsetse fl y, the vector for a parasitic disease, trypanosomiasis, which at the time caused heavy losses among cattle and sleeping sickness in human beings. In the 1920s, the colonial authorities embarked on a programme to eradicate the tsetse fl y, paying local people to cut down the woodlands.

“The Sukuma were very happy, because they were livestock people and the eradication programme not only destroyed the tsetse fl y’s habitat, it opened up new grazing land,” says Robert Otsyina, who spent over a decade in Shinyanga directing research for the World Agroforestry Centre.

The programme was an environmental catastrophe. By the time it came to the end, shortly after the Second World War, vast areas of woodland had been cleared. The environmental transformation was to continue over the coming decades. The human population expanded rapidly, leading to an increase in demand for fuelwood and cropland, and so did the number of livestock. This led to serious overgrazing. Matters were made worse in the mid-1970s, when the government’s ‘villagisation’ programme forced families to leave their farmsteads and move into newly created settlements. Traditional soil conservation practices were abandoned and much of the remaining woodland was destroyed.

To tackle these problems, the Tanzanian government launched a land rehabilitation programme – Hifadhi Ardhi Shinyanga (HASHI) – in 1986. One of its great achievements was the restoration of the ngitili, a

THE OLD WAYS ARE SOMETIMES THE BEST

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traditional system of land management which involves protecting areas of woodland so that they can provide livestock fodder during the dry season.

“The landscape is like heaven now, compared to how it was,” refl ects Robert. “When I arrived in 1991, there was degradation everywhere you looked, and in some areas the soil erosion was so severe that we used to get sandstorms.” The World Agroforestry Centre, a key partner in the HASHI project, set up its offi ce – now occupied by the Tanzania Forestry Research Institute (TAFORI) – just outside the town of Shinyanga in an area classifi ed as Forest Reserve. “There was almost no vegetation,” recalls Robert, “but we enclosed the area, excluded livestock and began planting trees. And just look at it now!”

Photo right:Cattle grazing in the ngitili in Shinyanga Region.

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Since then, virtually every household in the region has planted trees and many have helped to revive the ngitili system. In the mid-1980s, there were approximately 600 hectares of documented ngitili in Shinyanga Region. There are now thought to be over 500 000 hectares, thanks largely to the activities inspired by the HASHI project.

Pascao Hamisi Maganga is one of hundreds of farmers who have taken part in this restoration process. In 1974, he and his family were forced to abandon their homestead in Kahama district under the government’s villagisation programme. By the time they returned, in 2003, the area had been ravaged by tree cutting and charcoal making. Pascao immediately decided to set aside a portion of his land as ngitili; this well-wooded area now covers some 40 hectares. Besides providing dry-season fodder, the ngitili is a

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source of fi rewood and construction polls, and the fl owering trees and shrubs provide a plentiful supply of pollen for Pascao’s bees. “I get more milk from my cow than I used to,” he says, “and when my cattle have been feeding in the ngitili they put on weight quickly and fetch a better price in the market.”

Approximately two-thirds of the ngitili in Shinyanga are privately owned, with the rest being managed by village governments or institutions such as schools, churches and mosques. Approximately 90% of livestock farmers and 50% of crop growers now have their own ngitili. These vary greatly in terms of their size and maturity. In the eastern part of the region, an area of relatively low rainfall, ngitili of 500 hectares are quite common, whereas in the more populous central and western areas, where there is more rainfall, they are often just a few hectares or less in size. This is

a compelling example of how agroforestry can restore a degraded landscape. President Julius Nyerere once called Shinyanga the ‘Desert of Tanzania’. Such a description makes no sense today.

Photo right:Fodder crops have helped Juma Gichohi to signifi cantly increase the milk yields from his goats and cows.

“The landscape is like heaven now, compared to how it was”Robert Otsyina

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During the past two decades, the demand for milk in East Africa has climbed rapidly, and farmers have taken full advantage of the expanding market. In Uganda, production rose from 365 million litres in 1991 to 900 million litres by 2001. In Kenya, it rose from 2.3 billion litres in 2000 to 4.1 billion litres by 2008. Approximately 80% of the milk is produced by smallholder dairy farmers, of whom there are at least 1.8 million in Kenya alone. The majority farm small plots of land at 1 200 metres or more above sea level, and have an average 1.7 cows each. Most also grow cash crops such as coffee and tea, as well as vegetables, fruits and the fodder to sustain their livestock.

Although milk production has risen rapidly in East Africa, productivity per animal has remained relatively low, with the average cow producing approximately 8 litres a day in intensive smallholder production systems

using improved breeds of cattle. This compares with average daily yields of 25 litres for dairy cows in Western Europe.

Various factors determine levels of milk production, breeding being the most obvious. However, animal health and diet also have a strong infl uence. “To get the best out of improved breeds of cattle, it’s important to feed them a balanced diet with suffi cient protein,” says Frank Place of the World Agroforestry Centre, “and if a farmer is going to do that he either has to buy dairy meal, which many can’t afford, or grow his own protein.”

Research by the World Agroforestry Centre and its partners has encouraged increasing numbers of farmers to choose the latter option. Since the 1980s, scientists have conducted research on over 20 potential

BOOSTING MILK YIELDS IN EAST AFRICA

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fodder tree species, several of which are now widely grown by East African dairy farmers. Mulberry (Morus alba) and trichandra (Leucaena trichandra) have proved very popular with Kenyan farmers, while diversifolia (Leucaena diversifolia) is favoured, together with calliandra (Calliandra calothyrsus), by farmers in Rwanda and Uganda. The ideal fodder trees are fast-growing species that provide high-quality feed and withstand regular pruning.

“When I fi rst began planting fodder trees in 1999,” explains Juma Gichohi as he shows us round his smallholding in the hilly country to the south of Mt Kenya, “I thought I might be wasting my time. But I soon realised this was one of the best things I’d ever done.”

Cut-and-carry. Villagers in Guinea often feed tree leaves to their cattle.

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dairy incomes over a 10-year period. Among other things, the project is ensuring that small-scale dairy farmers have access to high-quality feeds, including fodder trees.

In the 1990s, Juma’s dairy cows yielded 7–8 litres of milk a day. Now he gets up to 15 litres from each cow. Part of the increase can be attributed to the fodder he provides. Every day he feeds his cows with home-grown protein in the form of leaves harvested from calliandra and mulberry, which he grows in a network of hedges around his farm. He estimates that this has increased yields by about 2 litres a day. He now has more milk to sell and he has established a thriving business selling fodder tree seeds to other farmers.

By 2006, over 205 000 small-scale farmers were using fodder trees in East Africa, thanks to research and dissemination programmes carried out by the World Agroforestry Centre and its partners. Two years’ later, a new phase began with the launch of the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project. This aims to transform the lives of 179 000 families by doubling

In the 1990s, Juma’s dairy cows yielded 7–8 litres of milk a day. Now he gets up to 15 litres from each cow

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Fodder trees have also proved highly benefi cial to a growing number of farmers who keep dairy goats. Take, for example, the experience of Gill Camau, secretary of the Kagundi-ini Dairy Goat Farmers Group in Maragwa District, in Kenya’s Central Province. When we visit him, he’s feeding the leaves of fodder trees to a dozen goats, one cow, two heifers, several hutches of rabbits and a small fl ock of hens.

“My life’s completely changed over the past 10 years, and a lot of that’s due to fodder trees,” says Gill. “With the money I’ve made from selling milk, fodder seeds and livestock I’ve bought a motorbike, a television and a solar system to light my house.” He can now afford to pay school fees for his children, something he struggled to do in the past.

Gill points out that about half the members of his group don’t have enough land to keep a cow, so goats are a good substitute. They require less fodder than cows, and owning several goats represents less of a risk than owning one cow. Lose one goat and you still have others to provide milk and manure; lose your cow, on the other hand, and you’re in serious trouble. Goats also make very effi cient use of low-quality fodder and their milk can fetch up to four times as much as cow’s milk.

When the Kagundi-ini group was fi rst established, farmers bought their goats from the local market. These local breeds yielded relatively small quantities of milk, so over the past decade Gill and his neighbours have put their females to German Alpine bucks. Their upgraded goats, fed on a diet which includes fodder trees, are now providing farmers with much more

GOOD FOR GOATS TOO

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milk. “I used to get about half a litre a day from a goat,” explains Mercy Nyoike, who has eight goats and one cow. “Now I often get 2 litres.” Some of the milk is consumed by her family; some is sold. Mercy is also making an income from the sale of her young goats. “Before I kept goats, I made very little money and I struggled to educate my children,” she says. “But with the goats, I’ve been able to pay school fees and we’ve also earned enough to build a new house.”

Besides increasing milk yields, fodder trees provide farmers with a range of other goods and services. Like many farmers, Juma Gichohin uses inch-thick calliandra poles to support his beans, and his fodder trees yield a constant harvest of fi rewood. Most fodder species used in the East African Highlands are nitrogen-fi xing legumes, and these help to increase soil fertility and crop yields. The use of fodder trees also

helps to improve the quality of manure. Indeed, if you ask farmers in Rwanda why they keep cows – or, more probably, a cow – they will tell you that it’s for manure, rather than milk. The manure plays a vitally important role in improving fertility and reducing the acidity of the mountain soils. Many farmers also use fodder trees to control erosion on steep slopes. In short, these are plants with many talents.

Photo left:Fodder shrubs have helped Kenyan farmer Mercy Nyoike to double her milk yields.

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In 1973, Félix Mairena López and his three brothers left the

town of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, and headed east into the

mountains in search of land and a new way of life. It took

them three days by horseback to reach the steep-sided

valley where Félix and his wife have raised their six children.

“When we arrived, all this was dense forest,” explains Félix,

encompassing with a sweep of his arms the land below his

timber dwelling. “There was just a shack in a small clearing,

and the fi rst thing we had to do was kill 40 snakes.”

It’s quite a walk to Félix’s homestead from the nearest dirt

road. Cattle graze in the pastures either side of the winding

path, and as you make the fi nal climb you catch a glimpse

of coffee and cocoa gardens. The only sounds you hear are

birdsong. Such is the atmosphere of rustic tranquillity that

it’s hard to imagine the hardships that Félix and his family

have endured.

During the years of the Nicaraguan revolution, many of

the farmers in this area were killed by government soldiers

fi ghting for the Somoza dictatorship. “We were forced to

leave, it was too dangerous to stay, so we headed back

to Matagalpa,” recalls Félix. After the Sandinistas came to

power in 1979, Félix returned. Then the Civil War began and

his three brothers volunteered. All were killed.

“I was a member of the local church, and I didn’t go to

fi ght,” recalls Félix. But his life was still fraught with diffi culty.

“In those days, you couldn’t keep cattle or poultry because

the soldiers from both sides would steal them. So all we had

to eat were the beans and maize we grew.”

A LESSON FROM NICARAGUA

Photo right:Félix Mairena López grows his coffee bushes under coconuts and other trees.

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After the Civil War the area continued to suffer from

banditry, with remnant groups of fi ghters posing problems,

but Félix was gradually able to develop the farm. He

established cocoa gardens in three separate plots, and he

planted coffee and fruit trees behind his house.

Although the Contras made him cut some of his trees down

during the Civil War, many of his pastures are still well

wooded. This is where his cattle graze. “The trees are very

important,” he says. “The grass remains greener and more

productive in the dry season than it would if there weren’t

any trees. And they provide fruit and leaves for my cattle

to eat.” Félix rotates his cattle between different pastures,

allowing young seedlings time to germinate and grow into

sturdy saplings. “Some of the saplings are eaten by the

cows, but some survive.”

At one point, we ask Félix whether he knows the word

‘agroforestería’ – agroforestry in Spanish. He says he’s

heard of it, although he doesn’t know what it means.

However, virtually everything he does falls under the

heading of agroforestry. He raises his cattle on wooded land

and he grows his cocoa and coffee under a variety of

shade trees.

Before we leave, Félix takes us to look at an area of mature

tropical forest. He has several patches like this, and they

furnish him with timber and fruit. “I love these forests, and

I love the idea that I have lots of wildlife here,” he says. He

adds that his wealthy neighbours, relatively recent arrivals

to this area, have cleared all the trees from their land. All

they have now is ‘improved’ pasture. They probably look

upon Félix as a traditionalist, a man of narrow aspiration.

But they would be wrong. It is farmers like Félix who are

managing the land in ways which will prove productive – and

sustainable – for future generations.

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COPING WITH ACHANGING CLIMATE

The increase in greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities is partly, if not wholly, responsible for global warming. Carbon dioxide concentrations have risen by 40% since pre-industrial times, and according to the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) average temperatures have risen by 0.65–1.06°C since 1880. However, there is considerable uncertainty about future trends. There will always be natural variations in the climate, and modelling the response of the atmosphere and the oceans to rising emissions involves a degree of conjecture.

Many of the farmers whose stories are told in this book talk knowledgeably about the weather. You would expect nothing else. The timing of the rains; the frequency of droughts and fl oods; the amount of sunlight during the growing season – these are matters of intense interest to all farmers. When there are changes, whether for better or worse, they are among the fi rst to know, and sometimes suffer.

CHAPTER 5

Photo left:Digging for water in a dried up river bed in Uganda.

The T-shirt tells the story. Peru is one of the countries where the World Agroforestry Centre has launched a REALU – reducing emissions from all land uses – project.

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greater severity at various times in the past – in the late 19th century, and in the 1950s and 1960s – than during recent decades. Nevertheless, the number of people affected by droughts in northern Kenya has undoubtedly increased, partly because the population has risen, and partly because the old coping strategy of migrating towards fresh pastures is no longer practised by many pastoralists.

Take, for example, the experience of Félix López in central Nicaragua. “What I’ve noticed most is the change in the seasons,” he says. “Now, the rains come much earlier than they used to.” It’s not just a matter of timing; the nature of the rain has changed too. “We used to get soft rain which would last for some time. Now, the rains are heavier and of shorter duration.” You will hear similar stories – of changes in the rainy seasons, increases in the frequency or severity of extreme weather events, rising temperatures – from farmers in many parts of the world.

Of course, anecdotal evidence spanning a short period of time should be treated with a degree of caution. If you talk to the pastoralists of northern Kenya, many will tell you that there are more droughts than there used to be, but meteorological records show that this is not the case. Droughts were more frequent and of

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WINNERS AND LOSERS

In 2013, the IPCC forecast that global average temperatures are ‘likely’ to rise by between 0.3°C and 4.8°C by the end of the 21st century, under a range of different scenarios. If the rise is at the lower end of the scale, the impact is likely to be modest; if it is at the higher end, it will be disastrous. However, even a 2°C rise is likely to lead to dramatic changes in patterns of land use. The report suggests that if we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the current rates, we could experience a 2°C warming within 30 years.

Some areas could actually benefi t from global warming: for example, a longer growing season could lead to higher cereal yields in northern Europe, Russia and China. But in many developing countries, climate change could have a devastating impact. One estimate suggests that it could reduce the yields of staple crops in sub-Saharan Africa by 10–20% over the next 40 years.

By planting teak seedlings on their rice bunds, farmers in Andhra Pradesh, India, hope to tap into the carbon market.

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Indeed, erratic patterns of rainfall are already affecting farming systems. A survey of farmers in 11 African countries found many were already planting different crop varieties and changing the planting dates to cope with changes in the climate.

Scientists working for organisations which belong to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have modelled the impact of climate change on a range of crops. One study found that smallholder rain-fed maize yields could decline by 10% in Central and South America by 2055. Another predicts that more than half of the Indo-Gangetic Plain in South Asia could be too heat-stressed to grow wheat by 2050. Yet another predicts potato yield reductions of 20–30% in the tropics and subtropics. Warmer winters could also have a devastating impact on fruit tree production (see The fruit and nut case, page 136).

If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the current rates, we could experience a 2°C warming within 30 years

Photo right:Tuma Galmuka Uka with the seedling of a moringa cabbage tree (Moringa stenopetala). The trees produce high yields even during droughts, and they are an important source of food, medicine, fodder and fuel.

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CAUSE, EFFECT AND AGROFORESTRY

Agricultural activities are directly responsible for 10–12% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and they contribute a disproportionate amount of two highly potent gases, nitrous oxide and methane. However, agriculture is responsible for a much greater share of emissions – approximately one third – if the clearance of forests to make way for crops and livestock is included. Deforestation is a major source of carbon dioxide, the most signifi cant greenhouse gas in terms of its impact on climate.

The reasons for forest clearance vary from one part of the world to another. In sub-Saharan Africa, small-scale farming is the most signifi cant cause. In South-East Asia, the drainage and conversion of peatland forests, primarily to make way for oil palm, is responsible for a fi fth of global land-use change emissions. In South America, large areas of forest are

Photo right:Land clearance is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Padre Abad, Peru.

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cleared each year to make way for cattle ranching and commercial crops.

Saving forests, or planting trees, is seen as one of the most cost-effective ways of reducing carbon emissions: hence the current enthusiasm for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). However, there’s a problem with this. REDD+ projects focus exclusively on areas which are classifi ed as forest. Yet in countries such as Indonesia, a signifi cant portion of forest-related emissions occur outside these areas, and large tracts of land classifi ed as forest have little or no tree cover.

This is why the World Agroforestry Centre has been promoting the concept of REALU, or Reducing Emissions from All Land Uses. Meine van Noordwijk, who has spent much of his professional life studying

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forest-related issues in Indonesia, has estimated that REDD+ projects can only hope to capture 60–70% of land-use emissions at the very most. “If we really want to reduce emissions, we need to capture the other 30–40% as well,” he says. “And one way of doing that involves the development of smallholder agroforestry on land which isn’t classifi ed as forest.”

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has agreed on a target of restricting global temperatures to a rise of 2°C above industrial levels. To achieve this – and many experts believe the target is optimistic – we need to reduce emissions and promote activities which sequester carbon. Agroforestry has a key role to play here. In terms of its potential to sequester carbon, it is far more effective than a range of other options, including improved forest and grazing management, the restoration of degraded lands and better rice management. Renuka Nomula of Jaffergudum village, Andhra

Pradesh, with her fuel-effi cient, smokeless chulah, which uses much less fuelwood than traditional stoves.

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TAKING THE HEAT OUT OF FARMING

The world’s carbon market, worth an estimated US$84 billion in 2012, is based on organisations or individuals selling the carbon they capture – for example, through tree planting – to countries or companies which wish to offset their emissions, either voluntarily or because they have a legal obligation to do so. But gaining access to the carbon market has proved exceptionally diffi cult for smallholder farmers. Acting as individuals, they cannot produce the minimum volumes required by the trade. They also tend to lack business skills and the fi nance required to register projects and measure carbon stocks.

However, a project managed by the World Agroforestry Centre has devised ways to overcome these diffi culties. Pal Singh, the Centre’s regional coordinator for South Asia, fi rst took an interest in the subject in 2007. “At the time,” he recalls, “I

was reading a lot about climate change, and the huge amount of funding available for projects that reduce carbon emissions, and I started searching for information about how agriculture was benefi ting.” The answer was: hardly at all. By mid-2011, when Pal’s project began to take off in India, there was just one agriculture-based scheme – out of a total of over 3 000 – registered under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, which was designed to promote carbon-reduction projects in developing countries.

Eager to make the carbon trade work for smallholders, Pal devised a project which encourages them to act collectively over large, contiguous areas, adopting a range of practices which reduce emissions and sequester carbon. These fall into three main categories: tree planting; agricultural activities which reduce emissions, such as ploughing crop residues back into

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the soil rather than burning them; and activities which reduce energy consumption, such as the use of fuel-effi cient stoves.

“At present, it’s impossible to say precisely how much the carbon market will raise, but we have estimated that for the Andhra Pradesh site, it could amount to 11 500 CERs,” says Pal. If each CER, or certifi ed emission reduction, is worth US$5, the 2 000 or so households involved in the project in the state of Andhra Pradesh would receive over US$55 000 a year – a large sum of money in a remote tribal area. The beauty of the scheme, says Pal, is that even if they receive little or nothing from the carbon market, they will continue to adopt measures which reduce their carbon footprint, because these make fi nancial, as well as environmental, sense. As it is, several major companies, including Danone, Sony and Ambuja Cement Foundation, have expressed their desire to buy carbon credits from the smallholders.

CAPTURING CARBON

During recent years, the World Agroforestry Centre has launched a number of projects which come under the heading of REALU – reducing emissions from all land uses. Focusing on different land-use systems in Indonesia, Vietnam, Nepal, Cameroon and Peru, scientists are exploring ways of enhancing carbon stocks and linking smallholders to the carbon market.

In Peru, the REALU project is working with cocoa farmers in Padre Abad, Ucayali Region, one of the most deforested parts of Amazonia. Since the 1930s, this area has experienced wave upon wave of migration, with families from the Andes descending to the lowlands in search of land and a living. A rubber boom was followed by the building of a new highway to the capital, Lima, and this opened up the area to even greater exploitation. On their arrival, many migrants cleared primary forest to make way for

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crops. While some practised, and continue to practise, shifting cultivation, others have made a living from highly profi table coca – the raw material for cocaine – and, more recently, from cocoa and oil palm.

Working with a local cocoa cooperative, World Agroforestry Centre scientists Valentina Robiglio and Claudia Silva have been exploring ways of capturing more carbon through agroforestry. “We’ve come up with a menu of options for farmers, each with different implications for storing and trapping carbon,” says Claudia. “We calculate that by planting a variety of trees, farmers could increase carbon stocks in their cocoa gardens from an average of 75–90 tonnes per hectare to 120 tonnes, without reducing productivity.” The excess 30–40 tonnes could then be sold to companies or countries that wish to buy carbon credits.

“I think this scheme could provide us with some income,” says Nicolás Agüero, who manages 9 hectares of cocoa gardens with one of his sons. “It may not be much, but it will help.” He says he would be happy to plant more trees in his cocoa gardens. Even if the carbon payments are modest, the trees will provide him with timber and fruit. He also knows that better management could increase the productivity of his cocoa gardens. This, stresses Claudia, is an important part of the project. “It’s not just about carbon,” she says. “It’s about creating sustainable and productive farming systems.”

One of the great strengths of agroforestry is that it delivers a wide range of benefi ts. Take, for example, the ngitili fodder reserves in Tanzania, described in chapter 4. These provide fodder for livestock during the dry season; but just as signifi cantly, they provide

Even if the carbon payments are modest, the trees will provide him with timber and fruit

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fuelwood, a habitat for wildlife, timber for building and fruits to eat or sell. They also sequester signifi cant quantities of carbon. Likewise, the Faidherbia-rich parklands of the Sahel. These have helped to improve soil fertility and crop yields. They also provide livestock fodder, fruits and nuts, and fi rewood, and sequester signifi cant quantities of carbon. Even if these and other forms of agroforestry fail to make a cent on the international carbon market, they are helping to reduce levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Photo left:In Peru, the REALU project is working in Padre Abad, Ucayali Region, one of the most deforested parts of Amazonia.

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ADAPTING TO THE CHANGING CLIMATE

Agroforestry systems tend to be diverse. Instead of growing one crop, farmers grow several, ideally providing a range of goods throughout the year. If one crop fails, or prices plummet, then he or she will have others to sell. If diseases or pests ravage a crop, the farmer still has others to provide food and a living. Agroforestry, in short, acts as an insurance policy.

A study by Tannis Thorlakson of Harvard University and Henry Neufeldt of the World Agroforestry Centre is one of the fi rst to provide hard evidence of how agroforestry can help farmers adapt to changes in the climate. They looked at the experience of farmers in Kenya’s Nyando Valley, an area which suffered severe drought in 2009 and fl ooding in 2010. During these periods, 72% of farmers in Lower Nyando were forced to consume seeds which should have been reserved for planting, 85% reduced the quantity and

quality of food they ate, and 72% were forced to sell some of their assets, including livestock. “Such short-term strategies to cope with climatic variability can have serious long-term consequences,” says Henry. “Once farming families fall into the poverty trap, they may fi nd it diffi cult to recover.”

The farmers told the researchers that they believed the best way to adapt to climate-related shocks was by raising incomes. To evaluate the potential of agroforestry, a comparison was made between farmers who had been involved in an agroforestry project and farmers who had not. The results were revealing. The former had signifi cantly improved their well-being by raising farm productivity and increasing their incomes, for example from the sale of seedlings, timber, fuelwood and fruit.

Photo right:Parklands in Niger. By increasing farmers’ incomes, agroforestry can help farmers adapt to climate change.

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Households practising agroforestry experienced less hunger than those which hadn’t embraced agroforestry when there were droughts, fl oods or other climatic shocks. “We found that the level of food insecurity during these periods – the amount of time during the year when people were hungry – was reduced by approximately one month for households practising agroforestry,” says Henry. Agroforestry projects also reduced the amount of time women spent collecting fuelwood.

Research in Niger also suggests that agroforestry – in this case, farmer-managed natural regeneration – can increase food security during times of climatic diffi culty. One study investigated cereal production in Kantché Department in Zinder Region between 2007 and 2011. The department had a surplus every year, ranging from 64 200 tonnes in 2010 – a good year for

Photo right:Narayan Lal, a farmer in Rajasthan, was encouraged to establish new orchards under a carbon project managed by the World Agroforestry Centre.

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farmers – to 3 800 tonnes in 2011, when there were severe shortages in many other parts of the country. It may be no coincidence that this is an area dominated by Faidherbia, a nitrogen-fi xing tree which signifi cantly increases soil fertility and crop yields.

Research in Niger suggests that agroforestry can increase food security during times of climatic diffi culty

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THE HUMAN FACTOR

Climate models suggest that the West African Sahel is likely to get hotter and drier, with a more variable climate, during the next century. This has serious implications for rural communities. Strengthening their ability to analyse their vulnerability to climate change and develop plans to adapt is one of the priorities of a World Agroforestry Centre project managed by John Weber and Carmen Sotelo Montes.

The villagers they interviewed in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger provided an insight into how the environment had changed in recent years. In many areas, woodlands had disappeared as result of overharvesting; wild animals had become locally extinct, largely because of overhunting; and constant cropping had led to soil degradation and declining fertility. Many villagers also said that rainfall had

become more meagre and less predictable. They attributed this to changes in the climate, rather than any human activities.

“The fact that most villagers recognised that they themselves, and their ancestors, are responsible for the negative changes in the landscape is crucial for any climate-change adaptation plan,” says John. “If they accept responsibility for causing change then they know that they can alter certain practices to reverse the trends and adapt to a hotter, drier and more variable climate.” The villagers identifi ed a number of practices which could help them adapt to climate change, including farmer-managed natural regeneration, which has led to the re-greening of degraded parklands in Niger, and the planting and protecting of drought-tolerant tree species, especially in drier areas.

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However, it will take more than agroforestry to help communities cope with future challenges. In several villages, the women identifi ed two major threats: the large number of children who cannot be properly fed, clothed and educated; and limited farm size, especially in the drier and hotter regions. Their solution? Family planning. Many traditionally minded men refused to listen to these discussions. Nevertheless, John and Carmen believe that many young men and women understand that family planning must be part of the strategy to adapt to climate change. “We need to recognise that human beings are also natural resources, and that managing the size of the human population is an essential component of a natural resource management plan,” says John.

Children in Droum village, Niger. Growing enough food to satisfy the needs of a rapidly expanding population is a major challenge.

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THE FRUIT AND NUT CASE

In 2010, when he visited North Vietnam, World Agroforestry

Centre scientist Eike Luedeling got a glimpse of how the

future could look for many farmers growing temperate

fruits and nuts. “There were some 10-year-old plum trees

that looked as though they were 100 years old,” he recalls.

“Some had fl owers as well as fruit. They were clearly

confused and experiencing inadequate levels of

winter chill.”

Like other temperate fruit trees, plum trees protect

themselves in winter by shedding their leaves and sensitive

tissue and becoming dormant. Each species needs a certain

amount of chilling to break the dormancy and spring into

leaf again. When the chilling requirement is not fully met,

the trees suffer from reduced or delayed fl owering, strange

growth forms and low yields. This is why fruit farmers in

major growing regions choose species and cultivars which

are adapted to local winter chill.

Drawing on data from over 4 000 weather stations, Eike

estimated winter chill for two past and 18 future scenarios,

using different climate change and greenhouse gas emission

models. His projections suggest that warm regions will

experience the greatest declines in winter chill – in other

words, they will become warmer in winter – over the next

century. This is disturbing news for fruit and nut growers in

California’s Sacramento Valley, China’s Yunnan Province,

parts of Australia and several other major growing areas.

Already, fruit growers in North Africa are experiencing

declining yields as a result of reduced winter chill.

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In some countries, production could shift to areas

where there is greater winter chill, although this could

be expensive. A more viable approach hinges on the

development of new cultivars adapted to a lower winter chill.

This has already been achieved for peach trees in Florida.

“One thing that is clear from our research is that choosing

the same cultivars that your grandfather planted may not be

a good idea,” says Eike.

Fruit sellers in Hanoi, North Vietnam.

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FOOD SECURITY AND INNOVATION

Why is it that small-scale farmers frequently fail to adopt

new practices and technologies – such as agroforestry –

when there is so much evidence that these could raise their

yields and incomes? A survey in four East African countries

may have provided the answer. “The evidence suggests

that there is a direct correlation between food insecurity

and a lack of innovation,” says Henry Neufeldt of the World

Agroforestry Centre.

The research, which was led by the Climate Change,

Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) programme,

explored the relationship between food security and

changes in farming practice made by 700 households.

The study found that many households were adapting

to changing circumstances, such as climatic variability,

although these changes tended to be marginal rather than

transformational. There’s nothing surprising about this:

farmers are always adapting to change. However, the fi nding

that the least food-secure households – those most likely to

experience food shortages and malnutrition – are the least

likely to introduce changes to their farming practices is of

major importance.

“We can’t say for sure that the lack of food security is

leading to a lack of innovation, rather than vice versa,” says

Henry, “but my feeling is that that is what is happening.”

Poor households are so preoccupied with day-to-day

survival that they have neither the time nor the funds to

invest in farming practices which, paradoxically, could lift

them out of poverty and ensure that they have a better

supply of food and cash.

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The research suggests that development agencies and

governments, as well as organisations like the World

Agroforestry Centre, should tailor their activities to meet the

needs of different groups. If they want to reach the poorest

households, they need to think about improving their access

to food before they begin promoting new farming practices.

CCAFS researchers have been identifying areas in western Nepal that are likely to experience climate change in the future.

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Indonesia is one of the world’s largest emitters of

greenhouse gas emissions. In 2005, these amounted to 2.05

gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), some 80%

of which came from forest conversion and other forms of

land-use change. This compares with 5.95 gigatonnes for

the United States and 5.06 gigatonnes for China, making

Indonesia the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases at

that time.

Between 2004 and 2009, Indonesia’s palm oil production

rose by 13.4% a year and exports by 16.2% a year.

This dramatic increase was largely stimulated by the

rising demand for edible oil, but also by that for biofuel,

particularly among countries in the European Union. “From

the European perspective, replacing fossil fuels with biofuels

is an attractive way of reducing carbon emissions,” says

Meine van Noordwijk, “but there can be a considerable

environmental cost in countries where biofuels are

produced.”

There has been a heated debate about the pros and

cons of palm oil production in Indonesia. On the one

hand, the industry has made some bold claims about the

environmental benefi ts of establishing plantations; indeed,

the Indonesian Palm Oil Commission initially claimed that

plantations consume more carbon dioxide, and release more

oxygen, than tropical forests. In contrast, environmental

groups have pointed out that vast areas of native forest

have been cleared to make way for plantations. This has led

to serious losses in biodiversity and high carbon emissions.

Applied research has brought a more nuanced and shared

understanding of the numbers involved.

At 25 locations in Sumatra in Kalimantan, Meine and his

colleagues at the World Agroforestry Centre developed a

relatively simple method to calculate the carbon budgets

of palm oil development. They found that plantations store

about 40 tonnes of carbon per hectare when averaged

over their 25-year lifespan. In contrast, logged-over tropical

forests, large areas of which have been cleared to make way

for oil palm, can store 70–200 tonnes of carbon per hectare.

Pristine tropical forests can store much more than that.

The implications are clear. Conversion of forest to oil palm

plantations should only be considered on land where

above-ground carbon stocks are less than 40 tonnes per

hectare: in other words, on grasslands or heavily degraded

scrubland. Conversion of areas with high carbon stocks will

lead to a net loss of carbon, with the draining of peat soils

leading to particularly high losses.

FACING THE FACTS IN INDONESIA

Photo right: Weighing freshly harvested oil palm kernels in Sumatra, Indonesia.

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CLOSE TO NATURE

Imagine yourself standing on the forest frontier, in the Amazon, for example, or in Indonesian Borneo. Turn one way and you face an almost impenetrable wall of greenery; from the gloom of the forest comes an orchestra of discordant sounds, of birdsong and monkey chatter, of mammalian grunting and reptilian chirruping. Turn the other way and you will gaze across long, almost silent vistas of soya beans or maize, rice or cattle pasture.

On one side, a world rich in biodiversity; on the other, a manmade landscape dominated by a small number of crops which provide a home for few, if any, wild animal and plants. The history of recent centuries has been the growth of the latter at the expense of the former. Approximately half of the Earth’s original forest cover has been cleared, much to make way for farmland and food production, and the clearance of forests has led to an ever-spiralling loss of biodiversity.

CHAPTER 6

Pristine forest and monocrop agriculture lie at opposite ends of the biodiversity continuum. Some agroforestry systems, such as the home gardens of Indonesia or Amazonia, are so rich in species that they are almost a proxy for primary forests. However, other agroforestry practices, such as the maize/Gliricidia cropping systems described in chapter 1, are not much richer than monocrops in terms of their above-ground biodiversity. This means that generalisations about agroforestry and biodiversity are meaningless. We must look at specifi c examples.

Agroforestry systems which combine a mixture of different tree crops – such as Indonesia’s damar agroforests, India’s shade coffee gardens and West Africa’s cocoa gardens – are generally much richer in plant species than farms devoted to a few crops. Multi-species agroforests are also an important habitat for wild mammals, birds and insects. Trees and

Photo left:Cavity-nesting birds such as the white-bellied woodpecker (Dryocopus javensis) thrive in the species-rich coffee gardens in India’s Western Ghats.

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bushes provide food, nesting sites and a sanctuary from predators, and agroforests act as corridors for wildlife, linking forests and protected areas. Multi-species agroforests also perform many of the ecological functions associated with primary forests. They sequester carbon, generate oxygen, help prevent erosion and maintain the cleanliness of rivers and underground water supplies.

Photo right:The critically endangered Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) frequently ventures into rubber plantations.

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SUMATRA’S DAMAR FORESTS

During the 19th century, farming families in Krui, a village on the south-west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, began to establish the fi rst damar agroforests in response to the rising demand for a resin, found in damar trees (Shorea javanica), used in the varnish and paint industries. Today, these forests are often cited as one of the best examples of species-rich agroforestry.

Damar agroforests are the culmination of a three-phase system of agricultural development. The fi rst phase involves the planting of rain-fed rice and vegetables. These crops provide farmers with an immediate source of income. At the same time, farmers establish cash crops such as coffee, black pepper, fruits and damar. After three years, the coffee and pepper come into production, and these provide an income for a further 20 or so years. By the time

their productivity is on the wane, the damar and fruit trees are approaching maturity, and for the next few decades farmers can tap the damar trees for resin at regular intervals.

An inventory of mature damar agroforests in Krui found 39 different tree species of various sizes and ages, giving the damar agroforests the levels of structural diversity found in primary forests. Another survey identifi ed 46 mammals in damar agroforests, including 17 protected under Indonesian law, and over 90 different bird species. Indeed, the density of primates such as macaques, leaf monkeys and gibbons was much the same in Krui’s damar agroforests as in the remaining primary forests in the region.

The fact that damar agroforests support high levels of biodiversity is particularly important as protected

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areas here are coming under increasing pressure. For example, nearby Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, which is home to endangered species such as the Sumatran tiger, Asian elephant and Sumatran rhinoceros, lost approximately one-fi fth of its forest cover during the last three decades of the 20th century, mainly as a result of agricultural encroachment. The damar forests are not a replacement for primary forest, but they do harbour many of the species found in primary forest.

Harvesting damar resin. The damar agroforests in Sumatra are rich in wildlife.

An inventory of mature damar agroforests in Krui found 39 different tree species

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RETAINING THE RICHES OF JUNGLE RUBBER

The area dedicated to damar agroforestry in Indonesia – in 2000, there were some 50 000 hectares in southern Sumatra – is dwarfed by the area devoted to the production of rubber. Rubber covers approximately 3.5 million hectares of land in Indonesia, most of it in Sumatra in Kalimantan, and provides a living for seven million farmers.

Indonesian farmers fi rst began to plant rubber on a signifi cant scale in the early years of the 20th century. They established the crop using slash-and-burn techniques on logged-over forest land or on cropland which had been left fallow. Most farmers would use seedlings uprooted from mature rubber gardens when they wanted to establish new gardens. Once these began to fl ourish they allowed other species to regenerate, thus leading to the creation of species-rich ‘jungle rubber’ gardens which provided latex for sale and various other products that could be used or sold, such as rattan, resin, bamboo and medicinal plants.

To the untutored eye, jungle rubber looks much as the name implies: like a jungle. Research in Jambi, Sumatra, identifi ed 37 species of mammal in jungle rubber systems, of which nine were endangered. Jungle rubber is also an important habitat for bats and birds. One study identifi ed 17 bird species in young rubber plantations less than fi ve years old, compared to 130 species in plantations over 20 years old.

At one time, most of Indonesia’s latex came from jungle rubber gardens. But those days are long past. In the mid-1990s, international agencies such as the World Bank began to promote high-yielding, single-species, monoclonal rubber plantations, and these soon began to spread across the landscape. In Bungo District, species-rich rubber agroforestry occupied 15% of the land and monocultural rubber just 2% in 1973. By 2005, monocultural rubber covered 27% of the land surface and species-rich rubber agroforestry less than 11%.

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The conversion of jungle rubber to monocultural plantations caused a signifi cant loss of biodiversity, and this prompted the World Agroforestry Centre and its local partners to devise alternative systems of agroforestry which would improve smallholder rubber yields and incomes, yet retain a reasonable amount of biodiversity. The project has been a resounding success. The new rubber agroforestry systems achieve higher returns to labour than traditional jungle rubber, at investment costs substantially below those of monoclonal systems. They are also acting as an important refuge for biodiversity, even if they are not as rich in wildlife as traditional jungle rubber systems.

Abdul Roni is among the thousands of farmers in Sumatra to benefi t from the World Agroforestry Centre’s rubber research. He is using high-yielding rubber clones, but he still retains a variety of other tree species.

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COFFEE, COCOA AND ALLANBLACKIA

Some 400 000 hectares of land is devoted to coffee in India, most of it being grown in the forested hill country of the Western Ghats, the ridge which runs from Mumbai to the southern tip of Kerala. This is an area which is particularly important for wildlife, and it has been classifi ed by IUCN as one of the world’s hottest biodiversity hotspots. Here, all the coffee is grown under shade. Surveys conducted in the Kavery watershed by CAFNET have found that this is one of the most species-diverse coffee production systems in the world, even though it is undergoing a transition towards more intensive production and lower species diversity.

The researchers identifi ed some 280 different tree species on coffee gardens. Bird inventories, based on sightings and hearings, identifi ed 109 species, and revealed a high incidence of cavity-nesting birds, a

good indicator of the health of forested ecosystems. The coffee gardens also provide important habitat for many small mammals, including bandicoots, squirrels and shrews. A similar story – of multilayered agroforestry systems rich in biodiversity – can be told for coffee and cocoa in other parts of the world.

In Africa, the Novella Project, described in chapter 3, seeks to ensure that the wild harvesting of oil-bearing Allanblackia fruit does not harm the environment, and that the Allanblackia domestication programme enhances biodiversity. “When you plant trees like Allanblackia on open farmland,” explains Daniel Ofori, a Ghanaian scientist based at the World Agroforestry Centre’s headquarters in Nairobi, “you will be encouraging more wildlife, not less.” As its local names – giant rats’ nuts, elephants’ porridge – suggest, Allanblackia is very attractive to wildlife.

Photo left:The blue monkey (Cercopithecus mitis) is one of 59 mammals found in the Amani Nature Reserve, Tanzania. The reserve has been a keen supporter of Allanblackia agroforestry.

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Indeed, when it is found in deep forest, animals often devour the fruit before human collectors can get to them.

In Tanzania, one of the project’s key local partners is Amani Nature Reserve, which occupies over 8 000 hectares of magnifi cent, heavily wooded land in the East Usambara Mountains. The area is famous for endemic species like the legless frog; it is also rich in Allanblackia. There are 19 villages around the edge of the reserve, with a population of 30 000 people. These people could pose a threat, but an enlightened programme of management ensures that they derive tangible benefi ts from the nature reserve. The cultivation of Allanblackia is one of several income-generating activities which Amani Nature Reserve has encouraged, and its staff are at the forefront of the research and development of superior varieties of

Allanblackia, which are now being planted in farmers’ fi elds.

“One of the reasons why we’re supporting the Allanblackia project is because we believe that if it benefi ts the local communities, they will be more likely to respect the nature reserve and support our conservation activities,” explains the reserve’s curator, Stephen Mm a si. A further incentive comes from the annual allocation to the villagers of 20% of all the revenues taken by the nature reserve.

IUCN has produced guidelines on best practice for the harvesting of Allanblackia. Among other things, these suggest that organisations and individuals involved in harvesting should encourage the regeneration of Allanblackia, refrain from felling Allanblackia trees and respect existing wildlife legislation. When it comes to

Photo right:Tea gardens near Amani Nature Reserve, Tanzania.

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domestication, the Novella Project believes that every effort should be made to resist the establishment of large-scale monocultures. Agroforestry, in short, is the best way forward as it provides multiple benefi ts, including a living for local people and a habitat for wildlife.

However, it is worth adding a cautionary note. It is frequently claimed that agroforestry helps to take the pressure off primary forests. At fi rst sight, this seems logical. If agroforests furnish local populations with the harvestable goods associated with primary forests – such as fuelwood and wild fruits – then there will be less reason to exploit the forests. However, there is little hard evidence to support this assertion. Indeed, the opposite may be true. In some situations, forest may be cleared to make way for agroforestry, thus leading to a decline in biodiversity; and the cultivation

of agroforestry species may lead to an increase in demand for products or species which can also be found in forested areas.

The cultivation of Allanblackia is one of several income-generating activities which Amani Nature Reserve has encouraged

Photo right:Looking to the future. Certifi cation schemes, such as those managed by the Rainforest Alliance in Côte d’Ivoire, encourage cocoa farmers to protect wildlife and look after the environment.

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“If you go to any small village in Yunnan Province during

the monsoons, you’ll fi nd women out in the countryside,

harvesting mushrooms two or three days a week,”

says Peter Mortimer, a soil biologist based at the World

Agroforestry Centre’s offi ce in Kunming, China.

Indeed, mushrooms are big business. In 2010, Yunnan

Province exported over 10 000 tonnes of Boletus edulis –

known as cep or porcini in Europe – worth US$71.83 million.

This represented a 15% increase on the previous year,

which was good for local harvesters and traders. However,

the increase in demand led to signifi cant overharvesting

of natural stocks in some areas. A similar story can be

told for many other mushroom species. The implications

are serious: a decline in the diversity and availability of

mushrooms could have a negative effect on the livelihoods

of tens of thousands of people.

Despite the economic importance of mushrooms – some

700 species are used as food or medicine in Yunnan

Province – surprisingly little is known about their status or

the management practices required to ensure their survival.

“Agroforestry has largely ignored the infl uence of trees on

fungi,” says Xu Jianchu, the World Agroforestry Centre’s

regional coordinator. “It’s a neglected fi eld, and we’ve now

set about trying to remedy this.”

In 2012, the Centre and its local partners launched a major

project to gain a better understanding of the links between

different species of mushrooms, land-use types and

vegetation cover along transects of different ecosystems

from Tibet to Thailand. By the end of the year, the scientists

had conducted preliminary research on some of the most

sought-after edible mushrooms in the Greater Mekong

region, examining their value, ecology and conservation.

The study provides baseline data for nine species, many of

which are suffering from overharvesting and habitat loss.

Among these are Boletus edulis, which has a close

relationship with various coniferous and deciduous tree

species. Besides its value in the kitchen, the mushroom

contains a vast array of compounds which are used in

THE FAR EAST’S FUNGAL FUTURES

Photo right:Women preparing caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) for sale in Qinghai Province, Tibet, China.

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anti-cancer treatments and as antioxidants. Although

overharvesting of the mushroom has led to its decline in

some areas, Jianchu and his colleagues have identifi ed

several examples of successful management. These, they

believe, offer a glimpse of the best way forward.

One of the most valuable species in the world is the

caterpillar fungus, Ophiocordyceps sinensis, so-called

because the fungus lives as a parasite on the larvae of

the ghost moth. Commonly used by local people on the

Tibetan plateau in the treatment of diarrhoea, headaches,

rheumatism and liver disease, it is also valued as an

aphrodisiac. In recent years, huge price increases have

turned this fungus into the most important cash crop in

parts of rural Tibet, accounting for 50–80% of household

incomes in the area where it grows.

The fungus is threatened by a range of activities, including

overgrazing by livestock, uncontrolled collecting, and

burning to obtain better regeneration of both the mushroom

and livestock pasture. But it doesn’t have to be like this.

In India and Bhutan, local governments control harvesting,

giving permits to collectors for a set price. And in parts of

China there are bylaws which prohibit the digging out of

living caterpillars and stipulate the methods of collection.

Another highly valued group of mushrooms belongs to

the genus Morchella, known as morels in Europe. The

overharvesting of morels has become a signifi cant problem

in Yunnan, not least because here, as elsewhere in China,

there are no legal restrictions on wild harvesting. It is not

just the morels which suffer, but their habitat, as forest

fi res are often deliberately started in the spring to promote

morel production. “If we can come up with some alternative

options, and identify ways of encouraging and conserving

these species, then it could help to reduce destructive

practices such as burning,” suggests Peter Mortimer.

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AcknowledgementsThe World Congress on Agroforestry 2014 was organized by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the Indian Society of Agroforestry (ICAR) and Global Initiatives (GI). This production of this book, and the World Congress on Agroforestry 2014, have been supported by, among others, the following: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), Flanders International Cooperation Agency (FICA), CGIAR Research Program - Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Irish Aid, MARS Inc. and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Several private sector entities also provided support, including BILT Tree Tech Limited (BTTL), Dabur India, Himalaya Healthcare, JK Paper Ltd, and Pragati Offset Pvt.

Photo creditsPhotos: Charlie Pye-Smith, with the exception of the following:Cover: David Rose / Panos; Page iii: Last Refuge / Robert Harding; Page vi: Georg Gerster / Panos; Page 8: GeoScience Laboratory, World Agroforestry Centre; Pages 16–17: Still Pictures / Robert Harding; Page 19: Gary Calton / Panos; Page 24: David Rose / Panos; Page 41: Alison Bockoyen; Page 45: Ndasima Kidasunikwa; Page 48: Carolyn Drake / Panos; Page 59 (right): public domain image; Page 61: public domain image / Wikipedia; Page 67: public domain image / Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Page 72: Eduardo Martino / Panos; Page 74: James Morgan / Panos; Page 79: Abbie Traylor-Smith / Panos; Pages 92–93: Crispin Hughes / Panos; Page 96: Robert Wallis / Panos; Page 116: Mikkel Ostergaard / Panos; Page 121: Mikkel Ostergaard / Panos; Pages 128–129: Claudia Silva; Page 137: Nick Sustana; Page 139: Neil Palmer / CIAT; Page 141: James Morgan / Panos; Page 142: Axel Gomille / naturepl.com; Pages 144–145: Lynn M. Stone/ naturepl.com; Page 150: Bernard Castelein / naturepl.com; Page 157: Dr Axel Gebauer / naturepl.com

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Charlie Pye-Smith is a freelance writer. He is the author of over a dozen books and scores of newspapers articles. He has also worked as a radio presenter and written and researched television documentaries on environmental issues. He currently works for several international organisations involved in research and development, including the World Agroforestry Centre. This book draws heavily on the Centre’s Trees for Change series.

The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) is the world’s leading research institution on the role of trees outside forests and on farms, with a vision of a rural transformation in the developing world assmallholder households increase their use of trees.

For more information, visit www.worldagroforestry.org. CHARLIE PYE-SMITH

for

TREES FOR LIFE

A book that brings to life the fascinating story of how farmers in developing countries are using trees to build a better future for themselves, and how scientists are working with them to create a more prosperous future.

“A journey through the world of agroforestry that will take you from the home gardens in Borneo to the well-wooded cattle pastures of Nicaragua; from the sand-swept parklands of Niger to the cocoa gardens of West Africa”

TREES FOR LIFECreating a more prosperous future through agroforestry

Trees for Life takes the reader on a journey through the world of agroforestry: from the home gardens in Borneo to the well-wooded cattle pastures of Nicaragua; from the sand-swept parklands of Niger to the cocoa gardens of West Africa; from the palmeries of Amazonia to dairy farms that cling to the fl anks of Africa’s Rift Valley.

Agroforestry – the practice of growing trees on farms – provides a living for a sixth of humanity, and nearly all of us use and consume some of its goods and services. Ever-increasing numbers of farmers are planting trees to increase soil fertility and crop yields, restore degraded soils, sequester carbon and reduce erosion. Trees on farms provide a wide range of goods: from cash crops like coffee to vitamin-rich fruits; from animal fodder to fuelwood; from resins to medicines. For millions of people, agroforestry provides a signifi cant source of income and a pathway to prosperity. This is their story.

This book was produced to mark the World Congress on

Agroforestry 2014, held in Delhi, India, 10–14 February 2014

The World Agroforestry Centre is a member of

the CGIAR Consortium

The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit

supported the printing of this book