Launching an evergreen future

Evergreen agriculture is a farming system where trees are intercropped with annual food crops, retaining a green cover through the year.

If you had visited Niger in the late 1980s, you'd have seen a landscape devastated by drought. Take a trip through the south of the country today, and you will find a very different place. Almost 5 million ha of agricultural land now boast significant tree cover, thanks to a process of natural regeneration managed by the country's farmers and encouraged by the authorities. This is 'evergreen agriculture' in action.

This was one of the key success stories discussed at an international conference held in Niamey, Niger, in January 2011. Hosted by the Government of Niger and organized by the World Agroforestry Centre, the African Forest Forum, the Africa Regreening Initiative and other organizations, the conference provided an opportunity to explore the ways in which agroforestry can improve food security and environmental resilience across the Sahel.

Evergreen agriculture is a farming system where trees are intercropped with annual food crops, retaining a green cover throughout the year. The trees help to improve fertility and yields, and provide farmers with livestock fodder, fuel, timber and other products. Yields of millet, a staple crop in Niger, continue to increase, even when tree density – the favoured species here being Faidherbia albida – exceeds 200 per hectare.

Conference participants identified national and regional measures to scale up evergreen agriculture. "The experience in Niger gives us confidence that it is possible to achieve a positive transformation in farming livelihoods and environmental rehabilitation across the Sahel," said Dennis Garrity, Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre.

The following month, Garrity joined Pal Singh, World Agroforestry Centre Regional Coordinator for South Asia, to launch the South Asian Network on Evergreen Agriculture at the Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, India. Professor MS Swaminathan, the father of the Green Revolution in India and an ardent supporter of agroforestry, helped to launch the network.

The network will advise local farmers on practices that encourage natural regeneration using indigenous trees in arid landscapes. It will also help to identify treebased management regimes to replenish soil fertility, promote evergreen agriculture using a range of different tree species and share information among partners. All countries belonging to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation are represented in the network, which will initially be coordinated by the World Agroforestry Centre's regional office in New Delhi.