Evergreen agri

Doubling food production by mid-century, particularly in Africa and Asia, will require non-conventional approaches, particularly since so many of the continent's soils are depleted, and farmers are faced with a changing climate. Experts feel the urgent need to reinvent agriculture in a sustainable and affordable way, so that it can reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases and be adapted to climate.

The world has to develop a concrete action plan for linking agriculture-related investments, policies, and measures to transition agriculture to lower carbon-emitting, climate-resilient growth. Step in Evergreen Agriculture.

Fertilizer trees draw nitrogen from the air and transfer it to the soil through their roots and leaf litter, replenishing exhausted soils with rich sources of organic nutrients. The trees bolster nutrient supply, increase food crop yields, and enhance the production of fodder, fuel and timber.

These systems also provide additional income to farmers from tree products, while at the same time storing much greater amounts of carbon than other agricultural systems. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already noted that transforming degraded agricultural lands into agroforestry has far greater potential to store carbon than any other managed land use change.

Evergreen agriculture has already provided benefits to several million farmers in Zambia, Malawi, Niger and Burkina Faso. For example, farmers in Malawi have increased their maize yields by up to 280 percent when the crop is grown under a canopy of one particular fertilizing tree, Faidherbia albida. Unlike most other trees, Faidherbia sheds its leaves during the early rainy season and remains dormant during the crop-growing period. This makes it highly compatible with food crops. In Niger, there are now more than 4.8 million hectares of millet and sorghum being grown in agroforests that have up to 160 Faidherbia trees on each hectare.

A word of caution: what fits Africa may not be best for Asia. There is already a lot of hype on endophyte (a micro-organism) based agriculture that helps do away with a large part of chemical inputs. However, one needs to be careful not to overdo it, and upset the ecosystem balance.