• What we do
  • The People
  • About Us
  • Why Innovation Africa
  • Contact Us
Innovation AfricaCreating the Future Today
  • Feature Articles
  • Innovation
  • Agriculture
  • ICT
  • Technology
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Health
  • Store
  • Contact Us
Menu
  • Feature Articles
  • Innovation
  • Agriculture
  • ICT
  • Technology
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Health
  • Store
  • Contact Us
  • Sustainable intensification: Is a systems perspective essential for integrated crop-livestock systems?

    January 16, 2020 Editor 0

    This blog highlights the key messages of a presentation by the Africa RISING Ethiopian highlands project manager, Peter Thorne (International Livestock Research Institute) and Sieg Snapp (Michigan State University) on 12 November 2019 at the 2019 ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, USA. Approximately 4,000 scientists, professionals, educators, and students attended the meeting whose theme was ‘Embracing the digital environment’.

    Key messages

    • It is very difficult to evaluate sustainable intensification without taking a systems perspective on the technologies and the outcomes of using them.
    • The Sustainable Intensification Assessment Framework provides a basis for accurately estimating and assessing the implications of intensification for sustainability.

    Sustainable intensification (SI) has gained increasing traction over the last 10 years as a paradigm for delivering global food production that can keep up with the ever-accelerating needs of still-growing human populations. As suggested by the name, the SI paradigm requires that intensification should be achieved in a sustainable manner (i.e. not compromising the needs of future generations). Intensification of agricultural production can take many forms, for example, the one that underpinned the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s helped humanity keep food production at pace with population growth. However, the present context has changed and ensuring sustainability is of vital importance. 

    We, therefore, need: (i) the ability to accurately estimate and assess the implications of intensification for sustainability, and (ii) the capacity to assess individual components of farming systems, their trade-offs, and the viability of the SI trajectories proposed.

    The Sustainable Intensification Assessment Framework (SIAF) provides a set of indicators organized into five domains considered as critical for sustainability, namely; productivity, economic, environment, the human condition, and social domains. The primary purpose of the SIAF is to strengthen researchers’ ability to holistically assess the performance of innovation in terms of the direct and indirect consequences within and across domains. Built into each domain within the SIAF are indicators listed to address smallholder farming contexts where agricultural production is closely linked with development goals such as alleviating poverty, avoiding land degradation, increasing food security and nutrition security, and supporting women’s empowerment. Ideally, this framework will support the assessment of sustainable agriculture intensification innovations through interdisciplinary, and iterative co-learning approaches. 

    Using this framework and evidence from crop and mixed (crop-livestock) farming systems in which Africa RISING (AR) works, we contend that, due to the complexity of pathways to SI, even the component interventions need to be assessed in the context of the farming system that they form part of. Failure to appreciate this necessity will lead to adverse, unintended consequences that can compromise adaptability and scalability. 

    Two examples from Africa RISING illustrate this point:

    1. Stepwise intensification of faba bean in the Ethiopian Highlands: Africa RISING researchers in the Ethiopian highlands were intrigued to see that smallholders growing faba bean chose to weed only once, although they were aware that weeding twice consistently gave them higher yields. After some study, the researchers discovered that farmers did this to allow volunteer ‘weeds’ like oats and Trifolium species which give relatively nutritious fodder to create an informal legume-forage intercrop in areas with limited grazing land. Because most smallholders have no other source of livestock feed in the growing season, giving up this forage resource would force them to sell their animals at lower prices. Africa RISING researchers started working with the farmers to introduce competition-tolerant faba bean varieties alongside forage combinations that optimize producing grain for both human consumption and livestock feed. A farmer practicing this intercrop makes approximately USD2,750 per hectare from their plot compared with USD700 per hectare for traditional management (one late weeding) and USD950 per hectare for improved management (two weedings). Farmers are embracing this technology because it is based on their traditional practice, requires no extra weeding and it improves livelihoods.
    2. Doubled up legume: GRAIN for food and income, BIOMASS for fodder, fuelwood and fertility for the soil: Smallholder farmers in southern Africa face a conundrum. They need to produce more crops from their limited land – but without reducing the land’s fertility. And farm sizes have actually shrunk over the years due to families subdividing the farms. The average farm in central Malawi, for example, is now 0.7 ha and most smallholder farmers can’t afford fertilizers. One innovative way of getting the most out of the land is by intercropping two-grain legumes with different growth habits, in rotation with maize – the doubled-up legume technology. Africa RISING projects in central Malawi and the Eastern Province of Zambia worked with smallholder farming communities to find the optimal sequencing of crops and spatial crop arrangements under conventional tillage and conservation agriculture, respectively. Groundnut–pigeon pea intercropping proved to be the most successful doubled-up system due to the two crops’ contrasting structures and maturity dates. Pigeon pea initially grows very slowly, with more rapid growth and pod formation taking place after groundnut has already matured and been harvested. The doubled-up technology offers farmers the opportunity to get 48% more profit from their land compared with growing sole legume stands of either groundnut or pigeon pea. In early 2016, the doubled-up legume technology was officially released by Malawi’s Agricultural Technology Clearing Committee for use by farmers countrywide. It offers huge opportunities for increasing land productivity and diversifying crop production for both resource-limited and larger-scale growers, with over 2 million households in Malawi and Zambia potentially set to benefit.


    Go to Source

    Related Posts

    • China’s 2015 target for solar power Increased by 40%
    • Building a Better Bitcoin
    • Towards coenurosis control: Practical training on dogs faecal examination techniques in EthiopiaTowards coenurosis control: Practical training on dogs faecal examination techniques in Ethiopia
    • Energy-efficient routing for wireless sensor network using genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimisation techniquesEnergy-efficient routing for wireless sensor network using genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimisation techniques
    • Nigeria Telecommunications, Mobile and Broadband Report
    • Transferable knowledge and skills key to success in education and work; report calls for efforts to incorporate ‘deeper learning’ into curriculumTransferable knowledge and skills key to success in education and work; report calls for efforts to incorporate ‘deeper learning’ into curriculum
    Sovrn
    Share

    Categories: Agriculture

    Disseminating maize agronomy technologies using interactive voice response in Malawi–the opportunities and pitfalls Exploring VR experiences of tourists' attachment to a rural destination

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    You must be logged in to post a comment.

Subscribe to our stories


 

Recent Posts

  • SL Crowd Green Solutions September 21, 2020
  • Digital transformation in the banking sector: surveys exploration and analytics August 3, 2020
  • Why Let Others Disrupt You? Take the Smart Self-Disruption Journey! August 3, 2020
  • 5 Tips for Crowdfunding During the Pandemic August 3, 2020
  • innovation + africa; +639 new citations August 3, 2020

Categories

Archives

Popular Post-All time

  • A review on biomass-based... 0.9k views
  • Can blockchain disrupt ge... 697 views
  • Prize-winning projects pr... 692 views
  • Apply Now: $500,000 for Y... 612 views
  • Test Your Value Propositi... 537 views

Recent Posts

  • SL Crowd Green Solutions
  • Digital transformation in the banking sector: surveys exploration and analytics
  • Why Let Others Disrupt You? Take the Smart Self-Disruption Journey!
  • 5 Tips for Crowdfunding During the Pandemic
  • innovation + africa; +639 new citations
  • SME Innovation: 10 Priorities for Support Post-COVID-19 
  • Africa RISING Annual Progress Report 2018 – 2019 now available
  • Fodder beet feed supplementation delivers dairy success for Ethiopian farmers
  • Using theory of change for outcome-oriented research
  • Africa RISING partners publish soil fertility management guidebook

Tag Cloud

    africa African Agriculture Business Business model Business_Finance Company Crowdsourcing data Development East Africa economics Education Entrepreneur entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship ethiopia ghana Health_Medical_Pharma ict Information technology Innovation kenya knowledge Knowledge Management Leadership marketing mobile Mobile phone nigeria Open innovation Organization Research rwanda science Science and technology studies social enterprise social entrepreneurship south africa Strategic management strategy tanzania Technology Technology_Internet uganda

Categories

Archives

  • A review on biomass-based hydrogen production for renewable energy supply 0.9k views
  • Can blockchain disrupt gender inequality? 697 views
  • Prize-winning projects promote healthier eating, smarter crop investments 692 views
  • Apply Now: $500,000 for Your Big Data Innovations in Agriculture 612 views
  • Test Your Value Proposition: Supercharge Lean Startup and CustDev Principles 537 views

Copyright © 2005-2020 Innovation Africa Theme created by PWT. Powered by WordPress.org