AGROFORESTRY AND ALL THOSE FOOD ISSUES: CLIMATE, NUTRITION, ECOSYSTEM

With a background of the  Food Security Futures and Hunger, Nutrition and Climate Justice events happening last week and this in Dublin, Oliver Moore delves deeper into the issues.

(Note: can you believe, I was the only journalist at the Food Security Future's event? The only one, for the entire two days? That's mad, Ted)

The all too familiar background issues to these events include rising world population, changing wealthy consumer demand towards meat and milk, shrinking land base, tightening of supply of resources, loss of soil fertility, pollution and the already real effects of climate change itself.

This fraught context makes the situation for food security, which is about not just availability, but also accessibility, utilisation and stability, extremely difficult.

While more people are being fed that ever before, hunger, especially in Sub Saharan Africa, has persisted. In fact, as the 2008/09 period showed, when an extra 96 million people were pushed into hunger, hunger comes from price volatility on commodity markets as much as from low yields.

Along with this, up to 2 billion people globally suffer from micro-nutrient deficiency.

The presentations at the Food Security Future's event go some way towards realistically addressing these issues. Frank Place and Alexander Meybeck's paper caught my eye in particular.

Place is from the World Agroforestry Centre, Kenya, which I visited in February. In a number of very significant ways, agroforestry holds answers to many of the problems outlined above.

Agroforestry is about integrating trees and shrubs into food producing systems. These elements work together to provide for a range of needs – fodder, fertility, nutrition, soil structure and yield improvements and also improvements in livelihoods through diversification.

Agroforestry is also affordable. It reduces costs for those, farmers or indeed countries, with very little cash to invest in the first place.

It also represents great value for money for international donors. Irish Aid is one of the biggest international donors to the World Agroforestry Centre in general, and its work in Malawi in particular.

Place's paper sets out some of the key issues. Multi National Corporations have little interest in investing in Africa in general or in hunger alleviation in particular:

Investments by the private sector in the developing world “accounted for only 2 percent of the total world agricultural R&D” in 2000, Place says. (admittedly some years back, but a revealing figure nonetheless).

What's more “in sub-Saharan Africa, the majority of the tiny amount of private R and D is oriented to export crop improvement research such as cotton and sugarcane.” Intellectual property rights are further cutting Corporations off from the neediest in the world.

“A larger role of public actors both in research and development” will be required, he says, “because private-owned technologies are keen to focus on major markets.”

All of this makes public sector investments in agroforestry crucial on a number of fronts.

Place points out that while “specialised systems” (i.e.monocultures) are often presented as profitable and easy to adapt technology towards, “diversifying production can also improve efficiency in the use of land. as is the case in agroforestry systems”... and of nutrients through “the introduction of legumes in the rotation or in integrated crop-livestock or rice-aquaculture systems. Studies show that they can also be more efficient in terms of income, especially if this is measured as an average over a period of several years.”

Through techniques such as the use of fertilizer and fodder trees, agroforestry improves both incomes and productivity: “Agroforestry also helps diversify income sources and provides energy and often fodder for livestock. Nitrogen‐fixing leguminous trees, such as Faidherbia albida, increase soil fertility and yields”.

He continues “thanks to development and community-led projects and relaxed forestry measures that enable farmers to manage their trees, there has been a considerable regeneration of Faidherbia in the Niger through farmer-managed natural regeneration. Agroforestry systems are indeed a key source of nutrients for soils and livestock in dryland systems of the Sahel where use of mineral fertilizer and feed concentrates is very low.”

For more on this topic see here; for Irish agroforestry see here . For an audio report on the Food Security Event, including recording of participants, listen here (and watch out for the  breakfast moment!)

#HNCJ agroforestry environment FOOD SECURITY FUTURES ICRAF

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