| Happenings |
| Agroforestry and the Horn of Africa crisis |
The potential for agroforestry to mitigate the effects of drought, prevent desertification and restore degraded soils has been brought to the forefront with the current situation in the Horn of Africa. A recent CGIAR–hosted event in Nairobi, Kenya saw experts discuss how agricultural research can avert future food crises and explore ways the CGIAR might make a greater contribution to the affected regions and beyond. The World Agroforestry Centre took the opportunity to draw attention to many examples of how communities across the world have been surviving drought through agroforestry.
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| Director of new research program announced |
Dr Robert Nasi will lead the new CGIAR consortium research program, Forests, Trees and Agro forestry: Livelihoods, Landscapes and Governance. Dr Nasi, who is currently director for the Forests and Environment Program at CIFOR, has more than 25 years research experience in over 50 countries in tropical resource management. The new research program is designed to meet the challenge for strategic, targeted and more collaborative research to support better management and governance of the world’s dwindling forests.
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| Rubber bounces back in Indonesia |
Alternative rubber agroforestry systems are raising incomes, retaining biodiversity and increasing rubber production in Indonesia. A new booklet in the Centre’s Trees for Change series, titled Rich rewards for rubber, tells of the transformation that has taken place since the mid 1990’s when the World Agroforestry Centre launched its research on rubber agroforestry.
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| Sharing knowledge for more chocolate |
Hundreds of thousands of farming families have benefited from improvements to the cocoa industry in Indonesia. The new Trees for Change booklet, Cocoa Futures documents how this transformation came about and how the lessons learned will be used by chocolate producers, Mars Inc and the World Agroforestry Centre to revitalize the cocoa industry in Côte d’Ivoire.
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| Farmers cash in on tree seeds |
Establishing seed orchards on farms and research stations in Malawi and Mozambique is overcoming a major challenge to upscaling agroforestry by providing access to high quality tree seeds. This not only ensures an ongoing supply of quality tree seeds, it also earns the farmers considerably more than their traditional crops.
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| Cropping under the shade in the Sahel |
The performance of different crops under shade in the parklands of Burkina Faso could hold important information for the future management of these vulnerable landscapes, according to two papers in the latest issue of Agroforestry Systems co-authored by Centre scientist, Jules Bayala.
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| Removing boundaries to link knowledge with action |
| For research to be taken up it must be at the heart of negotiation and decision-making processes and cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. This is according to a study in the influential Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) co-authored by Centre scientists. The study analyzes experiences of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in linking knowledge with action in natural resource management activities in developing countries. |
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| Better tools for designing pro-poor value chains |
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| Preparing fresh taro root for export, Cooperative Jorge Salazar, Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Photo: Jason Donovan, World Agroforestry Centre. |
Value chain development is widely promoted as facilitating win-win relationships between the rural poor and downstream buyers of agricultural and forest products, but does it really alleviate poverty and benefit small business?
Jason Donovan, Marketing Specialist with the World Agroforestry Centre in Peru explains how development organizations and research centers have embraced value chain development because of its perceived ability to leverage the resources of the private sector, and thus increase the sustainability of development interventions, while at the same time delivering tangible benefits in poverty reduction.
But as Donovan and colleagues have found, there are limited tools for assessing the poverty impacts of value chain development. “Plenty of project assessment tools exist, but most tend to focus on interventions that come from just one source and generally only assess short-term changes in income and employment.”
Coming up with a tool to assess how value chain development impacts poverty is the subject of an international collaboration coordinated by the World Agroforestry Centre and the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE). The work is funded by the Ford Foundation. Findings so far show a complex pattern of positive, neutral and, in some cases, adverse impacts on the poor from value chain development.
“Without innovation in assessment tools, those promoting value chain development don’t know whether their approach is effectively contributing to poverty reduction or what types of adjustment are needed to achieve greater and more lasting impacts,” says Donovan.
Efforts by NGOs, government agencies and research centers have focused on improving the technical, business and financial capacities of asset-poor households and businesses to participate in value chains. They have also facilitated sharing of information, benefits and risks among key value chain actors. In coffee and cacao, value chain development projects have worked with farmers to improve the quality of their products and facilitate access to specialty markets. Projects in the fruit and vegetable sector have focused on improving production technologies and building farmer organizations that market produce directly to major buyers.
“Most efforts to develop value chains assume that smallholders have sufficient resources to effectively participate, do not face major trade-offs in the use of these resources and are willing and able to take-on higher risks when investing capital and labor in a given chain.”
Dietmar Stoian, Senior Economist at CATIE adds, “Equally disconcerting is that impact assessments of value chain development tend to be simplistic, as they focus on the generation of employment and income rather than broader changes in terms of livelihoods and assets.”
Stoian believes current assessments provide an incomplete and potentially biased picture of the impact that value chain development has on livelihoods and smallholder enterprises. “We don't know how such investments affect asset building among smallholders and their businesses, and what other factors might have an influence.”
Donovan goes on to say that pre-existing assets and the level of risk people take by participating in the value chain are critical. “The weaker the asset base and the higher the risk, the greater the challenge for value chain development to deliver pro-poor results”.
Donovan and Stoian acknowledge the significant gap in knowledge about how marginalized groups, such as indigenous people, women, and the landless to might be better able to participate in value chains. This information is critical for improving the pro-poor nature of value chain development.
Work on the assessment tool began in 2008 and has involved professionals from over 20 research and development organizations. The aim is to devise a tool that will assess the impacts of value chain development on farming households and the enterprises that have direct business relations with them. At the household level, the tool will identify asset building, with human, social, natural, physical and financial capitals being the key parameters. At the enterprise level, it will look at changes in the viability of enterprises, as well as their ability to provide that services to the poor, such as credit and technical assistance.
An initial methodology was tested against 12 case studies before being refined and put to the test with a further 11 case studies from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the United States. These ranged from coffee in Colombia to dairy in Bolivia, vegetables in Kenya and beans in Uganda; each involving different development or research-based organizations. The findings were discussed at an international workshop earlier this year and the resulting final version of the tool is expected to be released in November 2011 in both English and Spanish on the websites of the World Agroforestry Centre and CATIE.
Donovan and Stoian believe the collaborative approach which has been taken will result in a tool that is practical and incorporates the visions, experiences and insights of various organizations that have a strong background in value chain development.
“The partnerships we’ve developed along the way have allowed us to establish an international network of development practitioners and researchers committed to ensuring that value chain development interventions truly target poverty alleviation.” Future work calls for the construction of a toolbox, which would provide a range of tools that address the specific information needs of businesses and development organizations related to value chain development.
Story by Jason Donovan and Kate Langford |
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