Soil erosion in the Philippines (from Agrilinks).

“Healthy soils for a healthy life.” Adrian’s blog post for Agrilinks backs up this motto used by the UN after declaring 2015 the International Year of the Soils. To read the post, click here.

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Labor intensive land preparation by a farmer in Lundazi, Eastern Zambia. In the background is a field under conservation agriculture, with minimum soil disturbance, less labor, and reduced soil degradation. Photo: Thierfelder, CIMMYT

The good news of conservation agriculture continues to spread. In September, a publication called “Climate-Smart Agriculture” was released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT); and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. The publication explains the principles of conservation agriculture, challenges to its adoption, and its potential role in climate change mitigation. It also details relevant experiences in Mexico, India, Malawi, and Zambia.

One of the authors, Christian Thierfelder, a cropping system agronomist with CIMMYT in Zimbabwe, has been a close partner in a SANREM project in Southern Africa led by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. SANREM Director Adrian Ares said Thierfelder “has been an excellent collaborator during SANREM Phase IV, contributing both scientific expertise backed by his numerous peer-reviewed publications and strong emphasis on training farmers and other stakeholders.”

Research has shown that conservation agriculture may increase resilience to climate change as well as reduce climate change’s negative effects on soil health and crop yields. Because the benefits of conservation agriculture are site-specific, additional work is needed to determine which cropping systems perform best under different biophysical and socioeconomic conditions for smallholders worldwide. Moreover, innovative approaches at different scales are required to overcome barriers for smallholder farmers to adopt sustainable conservation agriculture systems.

With more and more publications recognizing the benefits of conservation agriculture and highlighting successes achieved across the globe, it seems we are on our way toward agricultural practices that are smart for both people and the climate.

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A happy woman in a SANREM experimental field in Northern Cambodia.

SANREM underwent two thorough reviews conducted by renowned scientists in biophysical and socio-economic fields for Phase IV of the program. Since 2009, SANREM’s Phase IV has brought conservation agriculture practices to smallholder farmers in 13 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The focus on Conservation Agriculture Production Systems (CAPS) has aided farmers struggling with soil loss, low crop yields, and limited income. The long-term efforts established by SANREM in this phase seem promising toward achieving goals of higher yields and profits and increased crop resiliency in the face of harsh, changing climates.

“It is imperative that programs directed at decreasing soil losses and improving soil fertility and health be supported for years to come,” said a team of evaluators led by Rattan Lal, distinguished professor of soil science and director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University. “Research from such programs could greatly help reduce the tremendous burden of malnutrition in rural communities dependent on agriculture for their sustenance.”

Another review team was led by B. A. Stewart, former director of the USDA Conservation and Production Research Laboratory in Texas and past president of the Soil Science Society of America. The group was impressed by the project’s progress and recognized the need for continued efforts in conservation agriculture. According to their findings, more than 80 percent of the food in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are produced on smallholder farms.

“With almost one billion people in the world suffering from hunger and malnutrition and with world population increases expected from 7.1 billion today to more than 9 billion in 2050, it is critical that smallholder farms become more productive while controlling soil erosion and enhancing soil quality for sustainability,” Stewart’s group wrote in their review. “Conservation agriculture practices have the potential for achieving this goal, so this project is both timely and of great importance.”

Although the program will end in 2015, the improved human and institutional capacity developed by SANREM and generated knowledge will promote CAPS across the globe.

“The SANREM Management Entity would like to express deep appreciation to the principal investigators, host-country partners, farmers and other members of the SANREM community for hosting the reviewers, providing administrative support, and contributing all the necessary information towards the completion of these independent evaluations,” stated Program Director Adrian Ares.

To read the full reviews, click here:

Review 1

Review 2

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Dr. Agustin Mercado explains one of the trials at the Claveria Center. The SANREM replicated trials are shown in the background.

This year marks an extraordinary milestone for SANREM: its 20th year in the Philippines. The program has come a long way since SANREM’s first field sites were established at the Manupali River watershed on the island of Mindanao in 1994.

In Mindanao, SANREM has teamed with smallholder farmers to conduct research, train stakeholders, and promote new technologies. Team members integrated food production with several practices designed to conserve soil, water, and biodiversity in the area. This resulted in increased agricultural productivity and food security.

To recognize two progressive decades of SANREM achievements in sustainable agriculture, a field day and anniversary celebration was held on July 24 at the Conservation Agriculture with Trees Learning Center (CATLC) in Claveria. The celebration was attended by over 100 participants, including farmers, students, government officers, scientists, and faculty and administrators from four universities.

On the morning of the event, attendees visited a broad variety of field experiments and demonstrations which displayed unique solutions developed by SANREM to solve the area’s agricultural problems. Among these included sites displaying alternative cover crops like the grass Adlai and legume Arachis pintoi, which can also be used to feed livestock, and animal-built rainwater harvesting ponds that use gravity to provide water to sprinkler and drip irrigation systems.

Farmers build a rain harvest pond using simple tools drawn by carabao buffaloes.

Most striking on the tour, perhaps, was the study comparing five conservation agriculture production systems (CAPS) to plowed systems. CAPS plots were grown using minimal tillage, cover crops, and crop rotation in place of traditional practices like plowing. The plowed study plots showed signs of erosion and stunted corn, while the plots grown under CAPS had visibly healthier soil and lush, green crops.

After lunch, participants gathered indoors at the CATLC auditorium to discuss all that had been accomplished over the years. SANREM Director Adrian Ares delivered the keynote presentation “SANREM Global Experience on conservation agriculture,” which covered SANREM’s work with conservation agriculture across the globe.

“The overall goal is to increase smallholder food security and income and promote natural resource conservation through the development of participatory, gender-sensitive, economically viable and socially-scalable conservation agriculture production systems,” explained Ares

The meeting ended with a lively debate about launching the Philippine Conservation Agriculture Network. The network will promote scaling up of conservation agriculture technology in the Philippines. There was ample support for the idea, and the group decided to form a planning committee to determine its main goals and produce a charter.

For dinner, the SANREM group met Maximo Rodriguez, Congressional Representative for Abante Bisayas and Mindanao, who showed strong support for expanding conservation agriculture and working on legislation to protect natural resources in the Philippines.

“I will work on legislation to protect soil, water, and biodiversity resources in Mindanao that includes Conservation Agriculture with Trees,” promised Rodriguez.

“Most of Mindanao’s lands were beautiful rainforests,” explained Manuel Reyes, Principal Investigator of the SANREM project in South Asia and biological engineering professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. “They have been cut for timber and agricultural production and are now rapidly degrading, polluting streams and oceans. But we have hope. After 20 years of research, I am convinced SANREM has found a solution to produce food and, at the same time, arrest land degradation and restore degraded lands in Mindanao.”

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The latest SANREM newsletter has arrived and is available for downloading or printing. This issue includes technological advances helping farmers in Southeast Asia, the multi-functional tool designed for smallholders in Africa, and more news from Phase IV. Visit SANREM’s newsletter page to see our latest issue and check up on past releases!

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Aerial photo of an Andean potato farm

A buried treasure high in the Andes is getting special attention from Virginia Tech scientists. The unassuming potato is the world’s fifth most important crop worldwide, making it a truly valuable resource. Therefore, in their newest collaborative effort, the Feed the Future SANREM and IPM Innovation Labs are demonstrating once again how far the benefits of conservation agriculture can reach by focusing on this staple crop.

The team is helping five farming families grow healthier, more resilient potatoes while battling climate change, erosion, and invasive species. Techniques used in this effort include planting native shrubs and grasses to protect the topsoil, rotating crops, treating seed potatoes with a beneficial fungus called Trichoderma, and more.

“We’re reducing the effects on the ecosystem and lightening the farmer’s load,” says Adrian Ares, Director of the Feed the Future SANREM Innovation Lab. “When compared with conventional agriculture practices, the combination of integrated pest management and conservation agriculture practices – which focus on preserving soil integrity – pays off. Erosion is a huge problem up there, but conservation agriculture reduces soil loss dramatically.”

To learn more about the project, read this post published by Agrilinks.

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In Siem Reap, Cambodia, a group of 46 farmers, mostly women, proudly pose in front of vegetables they packed.

Conservation agriculture is making a difference for smallholder farmers in Cambodia. A series of workshops is helping women farmers learn to package and market produce they have grown using the system of conservation agriculture that promotes minimum soil disturbance, maintenance of a year-round soil cover, and crop rotation.

During the workshops in Siem Reap, farmers gather under the shade of temporary classroom structures in the countryside, working together to package vegetables for sale. They also collaborate to draw up their own label and logo that is then attached to their sustainably grown vegetables.

Women learn how to package their CA-grown produce during a workshop.

With the techniques these women have learned and applied to their vegetable plots, they have seen their produce rise in quality and amount. Research results from this project showed that plots utilizing conservation agriculture are a significant improvement over traditional farming practices through reduced labor, less weeds, and enhancement of soil quality.

The workshops are hosted by SANREM’s “Long-Term Research Activity for Food Security in Cambodia and the Philippines,” which began in May 2013 with 15 women farmers and expanded to 30 farmers in August 2014. Principal Investigator Manny Reyes of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, staff from the Agriculture Development Denmark Asia, and field technician Ren Ry, who were in charge of initial conservation agriculture training, teamed up with Buntong Borarin from the Royal University of Agriculture for the packaging workshops.

“We’re so encouraged to see how quickly the women have adopted these new practices,” said Reyes. “We have learned that they are sharing these practices with other women who weren’t at the workshops, which is exactly what we had hoped.”

Now, thanks to the hard work and determination of both Cambodian farmers and SANREM team members, smallholder farmers in Siem Reap are well on their way to inventing their own bright future of conservation agriculture and food security.

Farmers created a label and logo for the vegetables they will sell.

Photos by Ren Ry

Related Stories:

In Cambodia, female farmers gain new skills

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Clements and Larrowe talk with a farmer about her naranjilla plot. Photo by Zeke Barlow, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The Feed the Future SANREM and IPM Innovation Labs are once again making great strides overseas. Recently, Corinna Clements, knowledge base manager and student assistant for SANREM, along with agricultural sciences senior Austin Larrowe, spent two weeks in Ecuador talking to farmers about a project they have been working on to curb deforestation by using a better variety of the naranjilla plant. Both students work under the advisement of Professor Jeff Alwang, who heads SANREM’s LTRA-7 project in the Andes. To read more about their incredible work in Ecuador, see Students, professors examine ways to improve lives and agriculture in Ecuador.

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