Tag: achieve

The cost of industrial agriculture and junk food has become high necessitating a global search for sustainable alternatives to achieving food security. Experts see agro-ecological approach, which provides socio-economic and environmental benefits that can be scaled up to empower smallholder farming communities, as a viable option to achieving food security. DANIEL ESSIET reports.

Rising food prices and increasing climate instability have sparked political changes around the world and put agriculture on international spotlight. What kind of agriculture is best suited to respond to those challenges has also become a global subject of discussion.

Much of the policy debate on food security, climate change and agriculture assumes that industrial agriculture and related bio-technology are the only options for feeding a growing global population. Agribusiness and agrochemical companies have created and supported this image through aggressive advertising, lobbying and support for research institutions.

Experts see the agro-ecological farming systems as one solution. Agro-ecological farming is defined as the application of ecological concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agro ecosystems.

It starts from the interplay between the natural environment and agriculture, building on local priorities and knowledge about site-specific conditions.

Riding on this momentum, global farmers’ movements are promoting agro ecology to advance food sovereignty, which establishes each nation’s right to democratically determine its own path to ensure stable food supplies for its people under conditions that “feed the world while cooling the planet”.

Experts are also of the opinion that agro- ecological agricultural production will lower the use of imported inputs as well as production costs.

A food expert, Prof Tola Atinmo, said climate change and industrial  agriculture  require urgent attention, and investment in a model of agriculture that is truly sustainable.

According  to him, farming has to be  practised  in a  way  that  it contribute to people’s well-being by providing them with sufficient food and other goods and services in ways that are economically efficient, profitable, socially responsible, culturally acceptable and environmentally sound.

He said the  use of pesticides as practised in the developing world, poses significant risks to human health and to biodiversity, which is an important source of food and livelihoods for many of the poorest people.

Further loss of genetic diversity in plant crops and animal breeds, he  noted,  is dangerous, because it makes food supply more vulnerable to outbreaks of pests and diseases and to loss of capacity to adapt to changing climatic conditions.

For many small-scale farmers, the purchase of manufactured fertilisers and pesticides is constrained by the high costs of these relative to output prices, or simply by their unavailability. Also, the farmers who buy pesticides would still be at risk because the information on how to use them properly is simply not available.

As an approach, he said agro-ecology aims to make agriculture economically, ecologically, and socially more sustainable.

This, however, requires finding biological ways to reduce the need for pesticides. At the end, it produces positive impacts in terms of human health, reduced emissions, and greater protection of bio-diversity.

With agro-ecological practices that diversify agricultural systems, invasive species will spread at slower rates, establish less effectively and have more limited effects on yield and quality.

System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is an example of agro-ecology in action.

It is an agro-ecological approach that originally focused on better husbandry of hand-planted rice crops and has since been adapted for other staples. Key components of SRI include starting with fewer, younger, widely spaced seedlings, grown in mostly aerobic soils instead of constantly flooded fields. The SRI, which is also called the System of Crop Intensification (SCI) has had great success among small farmers in many countries around the world.

SRI allows farmers to increase their rice production through a shift in the management of plant, water, soil and nutrients toward a more favorable environment for the growth of rice plants. Farmers utilising SRI techniques over the past ten years have experienced an increase in rice yields from 30 to 150 per cent, depending on the farmers’ levels of SRI implementation and productivity, and on natural conditions for rice farming. They are also are able to reduce the amount of seeds they use by 50 to 70 per cent, and can lessen or end their dependence on chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

The Director, Research Operations Department, National Cereals Research Institute(NCRI), Badeggi, Niger State, Dr  Myimaorga Emmanuel Abo,  said  the use  of  SCI has shown very positive results in  some  part of the North as  the use of alternative management practices for a number of other crops.

For this reason, the principles that make up a SCI are now spreading through the country for a range of crops. With wider spaces between rows and plants, SCI is becoming the ‘normal way of growing more staples in the North.

If he  has its way, the yield of different varieties of rice  grown using this technique will increase more in the next two years or so in many areas of the country.

Right now, the SRI method is being used by only a handful of farmers.  But these few farmers are amazed by the results they are getting.  NCRI’s work is  unique in the region as it focuses on empowering people within the communities.

The institute has developed a participatory extension mechanism through local community based organisations, where people actively participate in agricultural development. Prior to SRI, the mainstream approach to rice intensification focused on the promotion and proper use of fertiliser, safe use of pesticides or the use of pesticides as a last resort, the use of improved seeds, and the promotion of integrated pest management (IPM).

The approach convinced farmers and other stakeholders that rice productivity could be increased quickly, reliably and profitably using these techniques. High external input with corresponding high outputs were widely accepted as the mainstream strategy for rice intensification.

The introduction of SRI gives small-scale farmers an alternative solution to the high cost of external input under the earlier approach.

According to him, SRI allows farmers to increase their rice productivity at a lower external input cost, and to maintain ownership of local seeds, even as the system enhances soil fertility.

Abo said  SRI is beneficial to farmers with small landholdings who practice rain-fed agriculture. It promotes the use of local seeds and the management of available water resources more efficiently and productively. As farmers gradually increase seed selection from their own familiar and valued seeds, they can achieve higher yields, thus strengthening their ownership of such seeds.

Last year, the World Bank Senior Operations Specialist and Task Team Leader of the project, Dr. Lucas Akapa, said at the opening ceremony of the Eighth World Bank Project Implementation Mission to Kano State  said the project in Kano has promoted Draught Tolerant Maize (DTM) in the traditionally non-maize growing areas using and adoption of System of Rice Intensification (SRI) among rice farmers resulting to average yield increase from 2.7 metric tonnes to 3.6 metric tonnes per hectare.

Trials with the SRI were undertaken at the SabonGari station of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria as far as 2006-07, while farmer training and trials were done in Ondo State about the same period.

In 2010, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) Green Sahel-RDI began promoting SRI in Jigawa State after sending participants to an SRI event sponsored the USAID-funded IICEM/E-ATPExpanded Agribusiness Trade Promotion project in Mali in 2010.

In July 2011, Green Sahel Agricultural and Rural Development Institute (GSARDI) conducted a training programme on SRI and organic methods with support from E-ATP project in Jigawa State. According to a 2012 USAID PowerPoint, farmers trained by the E-ATP SRI events in Nigeria have gotten yields up to 10 tons/ha. Subsequent trials are ongoing.

This year, SRI Initiative assisted by the West Africa Agriculture Productivity Programme (WAAPP), was launched in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, aimed at increasing farmers’rice yields in Nigeria.

The initiative is to make agriculture more productive and sustainable and to promote innovations in technologies, institutions, processes, organisations and markets.

WAAPP is a World Bank-assisted programme under the auspices of the member countries of the Economic Communities of West African States (ECOWAS). The objective of the project is to improve agricultural productivity in the ECOWAS countries.

The recommended SRI practices include: raised unflooded seedbeds; selecting only good seeds for sowing in the nursery and use of strong seedlings from the nursery for transplanting; using younger seedlings (preferably 8–15 days for the short-term variety, and 8–20 days for medium- or long-term variety) transplanted immediately after uprooting; fewer seedlings and preferably just one seedling per hill; shallow and careful transplanting; wider spacing between plants, preferably transplanting in a square pattern to expose plants more to the sun and air and to facilitate weeding; keeping minimum water levels in the field when transplanting and during the vegetative stage of rice growth; early and frequent weeding (to aerate the soil as well as to remove weeds); and application of compost, as much as possible. Some of the above-mentioned practices go against generally-accepted practices. For example, rice farmers are used to transplanting older seedlings (more than one month old), many seedlings per clump (more than five), placing the roots in very deeply when transplanting, and waiting for the field to be flooded with water before transplanting.