Nairobi forum will promote 're-greening' approach for degraded land that doesn't rely on planting new trees
By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Kenya (AlertNet) - Sarah Chebet from Nandi Hills in Kenya’s Rift Valley province knows that this year’s long rains are likely to fail. But the mother of one is determined to keep her horticultural project flourishing nonetheless by making use of modern agricultural technology.
In early March, the Kenya Meteorological Department predicted the country will receive below-average and poorly distributed rainfall between March and May, a season known as the “long rains”.
But Chebet is one of many Kenyan farmers who are learning new tricks to keep their crops alive without relying so much on rainfall.
“My parents were farmers, and they always depended on rain-fed agriculture,” she said. “The rains never failed them. They usually came on time, and for that reason, people could easily anticipate the exact week or even the day it was likely to rain.”
In the recent past, however, Chebet believes local climatic conditions have changed.
“The month of March has just come to an end. This is a period in which we used to experience long rains for planting. But as we step into the month of April, it is a pity that maize farmers - especially in Rift Valley province - are still staring at the azure blue skies, praying for it to rain soon,” she said.
With a small loan from a microfinance institution, Chebet has put up two greenhouses fitted with a drip irrigation system, where she plants high-value horticultural crops including tomatoes, carrots and cabbages.
“With such erratic climatic conditions, we have to become smart in order to survive. As the climate changes, we too must change our ways of farming in order to cope,” she said.
According to David Miano Mwangi, country director of the Kenya Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (KASAL) Programme, run by the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), greenhouse farming is just one method being used to overcome the impacts of climate change on crops.
The KASAL programme is promoting several other cost-effective techniques that are easy to implement and have helped farmers in drier areas adapt and improve their food security over the past six years, he said.
“We have introduced dry-land farmers to the practice of keeping indigenous chickens that are resilient to tough climatic conditions, as well as growing drought-tolerant crops such as particular varieties of cassava, sorghum and grass for fattening domestic animals,” said Mwangi.
NAIROBI FORUM
With the same aim of improving local agricultural practices, the World Agroforestry Centre has teamed up with international aid agency World Vision to gather diverse experts in Nairobi this month to explore innovative ways to tackle Africa’s unending cycle of drought and food insecurity.
The forum, from April 10-13, will bring together policy makers from across Africa, leading researchers in agriculture, food security and the environment, international NGOs, donors and the media.
The conference will showcase practical, low-cost and proven techniques to reverse land degradation and deforestation, lift incomes, adapt to climate change and improve food security – with the goal of encouraging farmers to adopt them across East Africa.
“Governments, development organisations and also the community must learn to see the power of simple, effective environmental techniques as a new way of tackling hunger,” Assefa Tofu, World Vision’s East Africa climate change and environment specialist, said in a statement.
Transplanting techniques from one part of the world to other regions has worked well in some places, but the results are not always positive.
“We have, in many cases, observed that however successful a project can be in one area, it does not mean it will automatically succeed in a different area, even if the climatic and geographical features are the same," Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told AlertNet at a recent climate change conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. "Projects with a huge impact in Mongolia, for example, may not necessarily succeed in Africa."
While certain methods may appear ripe for duplication, Pachauri recommended they should be trialled first in any new environment rather than immediately rolled out on a large scale.
REFORESTATION WITHOUT PLANTING TREES
At the Nairobi forum, Tony Rinaudo, an advisor with World Vision Australia, will demonstrate how Kenyan farmers in Kijabe in the Rift Valley region are managing natural resources through a programme called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR).
FMNR is a simple, rapid and cheap reforestation technique that has had great success at community level, particularly in West Africa, and is now being tried out in East Africa.
Instead of planting new trees, the FMNR initiative makes the most of existing roots, cut-down trees and shrubs that can be found even on what look like wasteland.
The farmer seeks out healthy re-growth on tree stumps and roots, and seedlings coming up from the ground, then prunes off excess foliage and branches, and protects the best shoots so that the fledgling tree can grow in a well-managed way.
The unwanted leaves and twigs can be used for firewood, animal fodder or put on the soil to hold in moisture.
According to Rinaudo, who has been promoting the "re-greening" approach since he stumbled across it in West Africa in 1983, half of Niger’s farmland - some 6 million hectares - has been transformed by FMNR in the past three decades. The land now produces triple the yield, which feeds an extra 2.5 million people annually and has doubled farmers’ incomes.
Today FMNR is practiced in eight countries in Africa and three in Asia.
“In essence, we hope to spark a re-greening movement that transforms thinking across the world,” said Tofu.
Isaiah Esipisu is a freelance science writer based in Nairobi.
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