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The fate of the world’s forests has never been higher on the political agenda. 2011 is the International Year of Forests, and a great many organisations, including the World Agroforestry Centre, are raising awareness about the importance of sustainably managing forests, agroforests and trees on farms. If we lose the forests, we will not only lose irreplaceable biodiversity and a rich source of timber, fuelwood, wild foods and medicinal plants, but the life support systems and environmental services for hundreds of millions of people.
Forests don’t end where agricultural land begins. What happens outside the areas officially classified as forests has a huge bearing on what happens inside them. Currently, 43% of the world’s farm land – over 1 billion ha – has more than 10% tree cover. And 160 million ha has more than 50% tree cover. While the number of trees in forests is steadily declining, the number of trees on farmland is increasing. In many parts of the tropics, agroforestry is providing essential products and services that can relieve the pressure on the forest domain.
There are a number of reasons why agroforestry is an integral part of the forest story, and why it is destined to become increasingly important over the coming years. Several of these are highlighted through the articles featured in this report.
Over the past 20 years, the World Agroforestry Centre has pioneered the practice of participatory tree domestication, focusing, in particular, on bringing wild fruit species out of the forests and onto farmland. Now, tens of thousands of smallholders in Africa, Latin America and Asia are growing superior, high-yielding varieties of indigenous trees like the African plum and the bush mango.
The benefits have been twofold. Farmers are increasing their incomes and investing the profits from agroforestry to pay school fees, improve their homesteads and gain access to better health care. At the same time, the domestication programmes have meant that rural families no longer have to harvest food from the natural forests. This has significantly reduced pressure on wild resources, as have other agroforestry activities, such as the growing of woodlots on farms.
Deforestation is responsible for approximately one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions. It is now widely accepted that projects aimed at Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) could play a vital role in the battle against global warming. However, our research has shown that a significant portion of the forest-related carbon emissions occur outside areas that are designated as forest. For example, in Indonesia, around a third of these emissions occur outside forests. The implications are clear: REDD projects will only tackle part of the problem.
The focus must be re-oriented to a whole landscape approach. That is, Reducing Emissions from All Land Uses or REALU, a direction that the World Agroforestry Centre has pioneered on the international stage.
One of the best ways of doing this is by encouraging agroforestry practices on farmland. Indeed, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that 600 million ha of unproductive cropland and pasture could be converted to high productivity agroforestry, and an additional 300 million ha of land currently under some form of agroforestry could be better managed.
This would help to sequester huge quantities of carbon, improve local livelihoods and – once again – take pressure off natural forests and biodiversity. Furthermore, agroforestry systems, by their very nature, support a much richer biodiversity than land with few or no trees. To give just one example, the jungle rubber smallholdings in Indonesia, where farmers grow rubber and other tree crops covering over 3.3 million ha, contains 60–80% of the biodiversity of primary tropical forest.
This brings me to the, potentially, most critical reason why agroforestry should be at the heart of both forest and food security policy. The story begins in Africa, whose population will rise from around 800 million today to 1.8 billion by 2050. If the future is an extension of the recent past, the omens are grim. Per capita food production in sub-Saharan Africa declined by 20% between 1970 and 2000. Grain yields have scarcely risen since the 1960s and remain below a tonne per ha, compared to 2.5 tonnes for cereal yields in South Asia and 4.5 tonnes for East Asia.
Fewer than 25% of African farmers apply any inorganic fertiliser at all to their crops. Most are forced to grow the same food crops, year after year, on the same plot of land, leading to declining soil fertility, meagre crop yields and hunger.
But this is not a situation without hope. On the contrary, Evergreen Agriculture is already helping to transform landscapes and livelihoods on a dramatic scale. This is a form of more intensive farming that integrates trees with annual crops, maintaining a green cover on the land throughout the year. These farming systems combine agroforestry with the principles of conservation farming, which is practised on around 100 million ha of land worldwide. Farmers disturb the soil as little as possible, keep the soil covered with organic material such as crop residues, and rotate a diverse range of crops. These include, crucially, leguminous species that help to replace soil nutrients such as nitrogen.
One particularly special ‘fertiliser tree’ is Faidherbia albida, an indigenous acacia that is already a natural component of farming across many parts of Africa. Its expanded use has made it a cornerstone of Evergreen Agriculture. Faidherbia agroforests exhibit ‘reverse leaf phenology,’ meaning that they shed their nitrogen-rich leaves during the early rainy season and remain dormant throughout the crop-growing period. The leaves grow again when the dry season begins. This makes them highly compatible with food crops. They do not compete with them for light, nutrients or water during the growing season.
In Malawi, maize yields are typically 2-3 times higher when the crop is grown under a canopy of Faidherbia. In both Zambia and Malawi, over 100,000 farmers have extended their conservation farming practices to cultivate food crops with Faidherbia. The maize grown near the trees is far more productive than the maize beyond the canopy, thanks to the nutritious boost to soil fertility and soil water conservation provided by the trees. In Niger, there are now more than 4.8 million ha of Faidherbia agroforests, significantly enhancing millet and sorghum production, as well as farmers’ incomes. By increasing soil fertility and crop yields, Evergreen Agriculture also helps to take pressure off natural forests.
Evergreen Agriculture, as it is practised now, provides a glimpse of a better future, where the land is managed more sustainably and annual food crops are produced under a full canopy of trees. The approach has attracted the attention and support of politicians, policymakers and non-governmental organisations on a major scale, as well those who are really going to make a difference, the farmers.
In 2009, at a meeting organised by the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, ministers of agriculture, land and livestock from across the continent published a declaration committing their governments to increasing the number of farmers practising agroforestry-based conservation agriculture. A few months ago, I explained the research behind Evergreen Agriculture to over 800 leaders working in agriculture at the African Green Revolution Forum in Accra, Ghana. There was strong acclamation that indeed, we must transform the way that trees can benefit the way food is produced. It was recognized that African food production needs to double by 2050, but that cannot be achieved by simply doing more of the same: doubling fertiliser use, fuel use, pesticide use and so forth. In short, the old production models are not suited to present realities. What we need are fresh, out-of-the-box solutions to the food and population crisis – and Evergreen Agriculture is one of them.
Aldo Leopold, the great American environmental thinker, once said: “Don’t worry too much about how fast you’re going, as long as you are going in the right direction.” The robust solutions of Evergreen Agriculture, based on the best of local knowledge and rigorous science, are now taking Africa in the right direction.
The right policy support will be critical in seeing the potential of Evergreen Agriculture fully developed on millions more smallholder farmers’ fields. Therefore, in 2010, we launched the Agroforestry Policy Initiative. Its goal is to accelerate the positive changes in government support that can enhance the multifunctional roles of agroforestry on the ground. The initiative has received strong support from the World Bank, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Collaborative Partnership on Forests and other leading organisations. Thus, we are embarking on a global comparison of best-practice in policy formulation and implementation. We foresee that this, and other complementary actions, will stimulate a serious acceleration in deploying agroforestry for food security while creating a climate–SMART agriculture*.
Dennis Garrity
Director General |
