The following op-ed originally appeared in The Charleston Gazette.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- If you drive just a few miles out of Charleston you'll see fields cleared for livestock and agriculture, mountaintops blasted for mining, and the Kanawha forest in its own safely protected area. But what you won't see is all of these elements of nature working together.
While a few farmers in the United States might plant trees around fields to prevent wind erosion, most clear fields of trees for grazing or planting. In Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and many other countries across sub-Saharan Africa, however, farmers are planting trees along with crops to help conserve and clean water and air, build up soils, provide feed for livestock, and -- perhaps most importantly -- increase yields and incomes.
Agroforestry, a land management practice that integrates trees with crops, is a simple approach that has been used by farmers for generations. Trees play a crucial role in both rural and urban environment by providing food, shade, livestock fodder, fuel and medicinal ingredients. They also hold soil in place, regulate water flows, and improve both quality of life and incomes. Despite its enormous potential, agroforestry has often been overlooked by commercial farmers, development agencies and funders in favor of "higher-tech" ways of increasing yields.
Organizations like the World Agroforestry Centre are trying to reverse this trend. Researchers are working with farmers on agroforestry projects that will help improve food supplies and nutrition in some of the world's poorest, most malnourished countries and also position farms on the front lines of combating climate change. The Centre is located in Nairobi, Kenya, though you wouldn't know it from the surroundings. It sits on a lush campus, thick with vegetation, offering a quiet oasis away from a city of racing matatus and ubiquitous pollution.
The Centre is hoping to help farmers respond to the many challenges they face -- low use of agricultural inputs, degraded soils and food insecurity -- through what they call "Evergreen Agriculture." The growing of nitrogen fixing trees, including the indigenous Faidherbia albida, along with maize or in rotations have succeeded in improving soils, raising productivity and reducing costs for farmers.
More than a million farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are planting or nurturing natural re-growth of leguminous trees and shrubs in conjunction with crops, in many cases doubling or tripling yields of cereal crops. The agroforestry systems reduce the need for expensive mineral fertilizers and actually increase the effectiveness of the small amounts of fertilizer that farmers can afford.
Dr. Dennis Garrity, the Centre's Director General, hypothesizes that although the Evergreen Agriculture system is still undergoing research and development, it may increase maize yields and provide greater household food security, while significantly reducing the smallholders labor and lowering overall investment in maize production. "We also have evidence," he said, "that it will improve drought resilience and increase above and below ground carbon sequestration as well." This is an increasingly important component of any agricultural system as the effects of climate change become more evident in sub-Saharan Africa and across the globe.
Agriculture is the human endeavor that will be most affected by climate change. But agriculture, livestock grazing and forestry -- responsible for nearly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions -- is the only near-term option for large-scale greenhouse gas sequestration.
Agroforestry, which reduces erosion and enriches soils with organic matter, when combined with other environmentally sustainable agriculture practices, could offset one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, while also increasing yields.
Nature's own approach, strengthened by science, provides many benefits. Agroforestry is one method that could provide the kind of efficiency we need to strengthen rural communities, like those in West Virginia and Africa, improve livelihoods, rebuild ecosystems, fight climate change, and help alleviate global hunger. The mountains and fields of West Virginia have given us so much, maybe it's time to put something back in.
Place is an economist and head of impact assessment for the World Agroforestry Center. Nierenberg is a senior researcher with the Worldwatch Institute in Washington D.C writing from Africa at NourishingthePlanet.com.
Source:http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6513
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