An Overview Of Our Solution
Human-nature interactions can only work in the long term if we respect and work with basic rules of life such as natural succession and biodiversity. Our experiences in successional agroforestry have shown that it is feasible to restore depleted soils and plantations of cacao, coffee or other crops in crisis without external inputs, by increasing the turnover of organic matter (energy), by diversifying production systems, and adapting management practices to the specific requirements of the crop and the ecosystem. Simultaneously the main problems with pests and diseases decline significantly. Already in the short term results are achievable. At the same time, food security for farmers’ families improves. ECOTOP helps design alternatives and offers training in successional agroforestry agroforestry, both in small and large scale farming systems.
Who is this solution impacting?
Community Type
Rural
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: South America
General Information
Organization type
Nonprofit
Ecosystem (select all that apply)
Forests
Population impacted
About 2000 direct beneficiaries
Challenge
Size of agricultural area
3500 ha
Production quantity
8392 kg/ha/y (combined yield; Schneider et al. 2016)
People employed
20 (at Ecotop)
Solution
Describe your solution
Successional agroforestry systems (SAFS, also “dynamic agroforestry systems”) feature multi-purpose and natural regeneration trees and many crops, based on natural succession dynamics: Crops and trees are grouped as pioneers, secondary or primary species, depending on their life cycle, to form a composition in which all stories (spatial) and all phases (temporal) are occupied, maximizing density and diversity. Where cacao is the main crop, a SAFS can start with maize and rice in combination with manioc and pigeon pea, followed by banana and papaya, pineapple and Inga sp., providing shade for slowly growing primary forest species such as cacao, fruit trees, mahogany, and palm trees. Timber as a long-term investment dominates the system after 10–15 years, with cacao in full production. Farmers harvest pioneer species from the first year on. The high diversity provides environmental services like soil regeneration, organic matter accumulation, improved microclimate, and pest control. Management is knowledge intensive requiring regular pruning and selective weeding. Optimal implementation of SAFS can result in high yields from a range of crops without external inputs. Depending on the organization/production level, mechanization is possible. A most important experience is the benefit of land preparation without fire. The advantage of SAFS can be seen already after a couple of months which helps to encourage farmers to extend learning plots step by step to the whole plantation.
Implementation
Describe your implementation
- Participatory diagnostic with farmer groups regarding their habitat and social situation (e.g. drawing the landscape 50 years ago, current situation and future situation in 20 years)
- Sensitization in respect to relationship of human behavior and relationship as integral part of nature, and in the principles of life and importance of biodiversity.
- Facilitators of processes (our ECOTOP team) have to work in the field together with farmers. Learning by doing as a process of developing knowledge. We are considering that knowledge cannot be transferred but developed in a participatory process.
- Obstacles are often institutional restrictions or lack of understanding of dynamics of nature, therefore, learning has to be considered as a process in the long term. Another main obstacle is an extractivist logic that has been promoted with the colonization of the Yungas, an immediate logic where life, nature and biodiversity are rather a threat than a virtue. Short-term economic needs foster monocultures with expensive external inputs, creating more short-term economic needs. Also, agriculture is not a desirable future for many, and the young migrate to cities (generational conflict). National mega-projects such as dams threaten local initiatives. Other adverse conditions are unfulfilled basic needs, bad infrastructure and extreme climate conditions that impede dedication to long-term SAFS initiatives. However, we note an increasing awareness of the importance to preserve trees and biodiversity, and interest in SAFS because of the need to restore soil fertility, and because families see that those who implement a SAFS are being less affected by climate change impacts, have better working conditions, healthier and more diverse food, and better markets (e.g. for organic cacao).
External connections
We have conceptual methodological and practical tools for different ecosystems and situations, but our vision is not vertical teaching but a dialogue of wisdoms starting from local knowledge and experiences. As there is no general recipe for SAFS (but underlying principles), we use the experience and vision of local families and local “lighthouse” farmers in field courses, farmer-to farmer exchanges and academic research. Concretely we accompany the restoration of degraded plots, and also the implementation of new ones, with a successional focus and without using fire. One main concept is to grant local innovative farmers a university title of agricultural technicians (cooperating with the Faculty of Agronomy from the public university UMSA, La Paz), which generates prestige in the communities and helps to interact with policy makers. Many of such “peritos” have become local leaders and are now in various positions, promoting SAFS locally. We work with different kinds of local actors: communities, their organizations (syndicates, cooperatives, small enterprises, women’s’ groups, local indigenous organizations), municipal governments, innovative families, given that there is a wish for change. It is important that they are content with what they do, therefore the spiritual component is crucial: A relationship with nature needs to be re-established, people need a vision in the long term and invest in terms of costs, energy and risk.
Results
What is the environmental or ecological challenge you are targeting with your solution?
Bolivia has one of the highest deforestation rates of the world, and some of the biodiversity-richest ecosystems. Where the Andes connect with the Amazon, a challenge is to avoid extension of the agricultural frontier while preserving forests through integrative use. In the zone of the foothills of the Bolivian Andes where we work called the Yungas, we see two different resource use visions: 1) migrants from the Andes who have been burning forests and implementing monocultures for around 60 years; and 2) local indigenous people (Mosetenes, Chimanes, Tacanas, Lecos, and others) who practice subsistence agriculture complemented with hunting and gathering. The first have entered in a “fallow crisis” where soils are depleted, production is low, and attacks of pests and diseases increase the use of agrochemicals, many banned for their toxicity. Climate change increases the challenges through extreme weather events, prolonged droughts, and increased heat affecting working conditions.
Describe the context in which you are operating
Migrants from the Andes were given about 15 ha each since the 1950/60s plus inputs and trainings by the government, but they did not have an ecological understanding of the region. They have been clearing all the forest they could and implementing monocultures which, especially on the steep slopes of the Yungas and with the high precipitation quickly degrades soils. Usually the whole family works on the land, producing for the market. Main crops are in Alto Beni cocoa, in Caranavi coffee, in Corocio coffee and coca, and in La Asunta coca. The Yungas are the country’s main coca production area for chewing, infusion and other legal use on more than 14 000 ha, most of them monocultures. Coca accounts for around 80% of incomes from agriculture and is important for local families (not perishable, light in weight, high and stable prices even during inflations). A new law increasing the legal coca areas in the Yungas by 80% is expected for this year. The expansion of coca monocultures compromises local food production and agrobiodiversity, along with the related knowledge. Malnutrition in children prevails in Bolivia along with vulnerability to food insecurity, while obesity and related non-communicable diseases are strongly on the rise.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
Todt et al. (2010, 2009) found significantly higher nutrient concentrations, thicker Ah horizons, and higher organic matter content in SAFS than in monocultures in Alto Beni. More than 70 tree species and 37 crop varieties were found in cacao SAFS (Jacobi et al. 2013, Milz 2008). Also wild species diversity (e.g. ant species) was significantly higher in SAFS than in any other cultivation system. The Yungas connect two national parks (Madidi and Isiboro Seguré), both part of the “hotspot of biodiversity” of the tropical Andes. Therefore cultivation systems have an important role as a biological corridor. Bolivia has lost an estimated 2 million ha of forest in the last decade, mostly to monocultures and cattle. Therefore agroforestry and silvopastoral systems are necessary as an alternative. Through the SAFS approach, productivity and biodiversity and ecosystem functions are connected.
Language(s)
Spanish, Aymara, Quechua
Water
Agroforestry increases soil infiltration and water retention capacity. SAFS have been successfully implemented for integrated watershed management to avoid degradation of water resources through monocultures by municipal governments e.g. of Alto Beni. In Ivory Coast and Ghana SAFS are showing less water stress in cocoa plantations during dry season.
Food Security/Nutrition
The focus of including pioneer food crops from the start such as corn, beans, manioc, banana, plantain and rice have helped to sustain a diversified and healthy diet from the first year when returns from high value crops such as cacao, coffee, coca or timber are low and investments are high. Also after years there are always spaces in the plots where food crops persist (e.g. banana and pineapple), but food from trees, e.g. breadfruit or each palm, become increasingly important.
Economic/Sustainable Development
Those farms that follow the logic of short-term (e,g, food, and hibiscus which has a stable market), medium (e,g, coffee, cacao, coca) and long-term (high-value timber) crops have been the most successful. Also complementing a cash crop (e.g. cacao) with a food crop that generates income throughout the year (e.g. banana) has shown to be a successful economic strategy.
Climate
Resilience to climate change impacts is an important virtue of SAFS: Better soils mean healthier plants that can resist better to adverse conditions. Root systems reaching to different soil depths increase water use efficiency and thus a higher resistance to droughts. Working conditions are better in the shade. Trees are crucial in the water-air circulation system of the Amazon. A high sequestration of carbon is a side effect of global relevance.
Sustainability
SAFS replication by local families takes place without significant external financial inputs, many have benefitted from its profitability, especially when including mahogany which has been eliminated in the natural forest. Cash crops (especially high-quality) like organic cacao have reliable markets. Obstacles are more time and knowledge, but here are now families implementing SAFS with employees, credits and significant investments and returns. We work with families sporadically but in the long term, without significant expenditures. Most local actors are organized in cooperatives which aids financial sustainability. Our institution depends on projects and consultancies, increasingly governmental (local/national) and private.
Return on investment
Studies showed an average implementation cost of 3500BOB (~500USD) per ha SAFS including labor costs as compared to a monoculture of 1400BOB (~200USD), both with rice as a main crop in the first years. But returns were 6550BOB (920USD) for SAFS due to sales of a diversity of crops, and 1084BOB (152USD) for monocultures, so that SAFS had a net revenue of 3050BOB (428USD) and monocultures a deficit of 316BOB (44USD) in the first year (Schnatman 2006). A recent study in Alto Beni showed that although SAFS with cocoa as the main crops are more work demanding than monocultures, return on labor is twice as high as in monocultures in young plots. In their study, cocoa agroforestry resulted as profitable as monocultures (Armengot et al 2016)
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Replication and Scale
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
The principles of life, the basis of SAFS, work in every ecosystem. Many come to visit innovative families in the Yungas. We work with the Viceministry of coca: politicians promote health benefits which is more convincing when coca grows in a sustainable cultivation system without agrochemicals, and increasingly cacao companies visit because their yields in Malaysia, Cote D’Ivoire and Indonesia decrease as monocultures are in crisis. It is important to visit, see, and listen, and that local farmers are protagonists: from the Yungas they travel to Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica, Germany, and Switzerland, we are working with 600 farmers in Cote D’Ivoire, and SAFS are being tested in Indonesia, Ghana and Malaysia. South-South cooperation via farmer-to farmer learning is an important strategy. Experiences in Ecuador with the UNOCACE Cooperative implementing new cacao plantations with Cacao arriba (specialty cacao) are showing positive cash flow already after 12 months!