Tree farming: Tackling climate change and sustaining livelihoods
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Researchers in tree farming say a global survey shows a significant increase in the number of trees growing on farms.
Dr. Dennis Garrity is the Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre, the Nairobi-based organization that conducted the study.
He said the findings should lead policy makers to consider scaling up tree planting efforts across the world as a solution to deforestation, as well as a key way of improving food productivity.
Dr Garrity presented highlights of the study at the opening session of the five-day 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry which opened in Nairobi on Monday 24 August.
Farmers, mostly in developing countries, have been accused of destroying forests as they seek to expand land for cultivation. Pressure to prevent farmers encroaching on natural forests has increased in recent months, given the growing awareness that deforestation is a major driver of climate change.
Trees store carbon dioxide, the main gas causing climate change, and when they are cut they release the gas. This enters the atmosphere and acts as a blanket that stops heat from the sun from escaping harmlessly back into space.
Dr Garrity argues that, given the new evidence, farmers should be seen as partners in the fight against deforestation rather than as obstacles, especially because it is difficult to stop them cutting trees in an effort to meet their basic needs such as fuel wood.
“The problem is that policy makers have been slow to recognize this phenomenon and take advantage of the beneficial effect of planting trees on farms,” he said.
Dr Garrity says the findings show that trees such as Faidherbia albida, which has historically been grown in Malawi, are an important part of people’s lives, especially the poor.
This is because they provide farmers with additional incentives such as fruits, organic fertilizers, fuel wood, timber, and fodder for livestock, and can also be used by farmers to earn money by selling carbon credits.
Carbon credits represent the amount of carbon dioxide a system such as agroforestry is able to absorb from the atmosphere. A monetary value is attached to the process, and the credits can be traded like a currency.
Dr Garrity says agroforestry, and agriculture in general, should be considered crucial parts of the growing global drive to lower emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases , given off by deforestation and industrialization.
Agroforestry experts add that increased tree planting on farms provides farmers with still more incentives, such as improved soil productivity.
Dr Garrity said agroforestry had greatly increased tree cover in the last ten years to over one billion hectares, 46% of the world’s farmland and home to over 1.8 billion people.
He said that encouraging wider adoption of trees like Faidherbia albida, which naturally absorbs high quantities of nitrogen from the atmosphere through its leaves, could improve food productivity. Nitrogen is a key component in plant growth.
The tree sheds its leaves at the start of the rainy season, a form of organic fertilizer for crop plants. In the process it allows the crops to grow without facing competition from it for water and sunlight.
However some in the agricultural community doubt the figure of one billion hectares which the report says are now currently under agroforestry. They also query the suggested extent of the contribution of agroforestry in improving farmers’ lives.
Stephen Carr, who has lived in Malawi for more than 50 years, says he pioneered a campaign to encourage the widespread adoption of Faidherbia between 1989 and 1999, in an attempt to improve food productivity among smallholder farmers.
But after investing over US$20 million which he obtained from international funding organizations and donor countries, the programme succeeded in getting only 350,000 people to adopt Faidherbia as a fertilizer tree over ten years.
Carr argues that while Faidherbia can improve soil fertility, it takes up to 20 years for farmers to obtain from it the amount of organic fertilizer they need to improve productivity. He said farmers were disappointed with its growth, and most abandoned it.
Mineral fertilizers, he says, have more potential not only in improving food productivity but also in helping to slow the rate at which farmers destroy forests and other natural ecosystems in search of fertile soils.
Louis Verchot is a scientist from the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), with extensive experience in agricultural systems in Africa.
He argues that while agroforestry has a big role to play in helping farmers to withstand the effects of climate change, it needs to be complemented by measures like mineral fertilizer subsidies.
The call for renewed efforts to boost agroforestry comes just three months before the long-awaited UN negotiations in December in Copenhagen, Denmark, aimed at reducing global greenhouse house gas emissions.
Dr Garrity and other conservationists argue that agroforestry as a form of land use should be included as a key factor in the negotiations.
There are however some conservationists, including Nobel Laureate Professor Wangari Maathai, who call for a careful approach to some forms of agroforestry, especially the growing of one type of tree species over large tracts of land.
They argue that in most cases natural ecosystems have been destroyed and replaced with exotic monoculture tree farms that are sometimes dangerous to the environment.
Professor Maathai called for the conservation of existing natural environments to be given priority and said measures to regenerate forests should encourage a variety of native trees to be planted rather than exotic monocultures.
Others, like Edmund Barrow from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), argue that there are still a number of social and economic hurdles to overcome. These, they say, include farmers’ lack of access to markets both local and international, which makes it difficult to sell their goods.
Barrow also argues that the existing land tenure systems such as communal ownership of land, which limit people’s access to land, present challenges that prevent people from planting trees.
And in a number of countries women, who contribute most of the labour in agriculture, do not own land and therefore may not have the authority to plant trees or full rights over them.
