Dr. Susan Chomba, Regreening Africa Programme Manager from the World Agroforestry Centre (CIFOR-ICRAF), discusses agroforestry as a Nature-based Solution and on engaging communities in agroforestry programs.
Dr. Chomba is a social scientist with over 15 years of experience in governance, policies and institutions in forestry, agriculture and rural development in Africa. She works on climate change policies, land tenure, equity, vulnerability and gender.

This is the story of an inspiring Maasai man who has brought positive change to his land and community through permaculture. Joseph Lentunyoi started a permaculture center in his dry, arid homeland of Laikipia County 7 years ago where he showcases sustainable food systems following permaculture design principles, land regeneration practices, and other simple solutions that can improve livelihoods (solar, biogas, natural building techniques, etc.). Laikipia Permaculture Center -- the organization he founded -- also helped create business opportunities for women, including making cosmetics from Aloe and many different products from a locally growing cactus.

As part of the project “Building capacity: international advanced application course on GIAHS (globally important agricultural heritage systems)“, co-financed by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) and involving the Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Forestry Sciences and Technologies (DAGRI) of the University of Florence as the implementing party and Polo universitario città di Prato (PIN) as a partner, a collaboration with Slow Food has come to life.

Within the framework of Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, a series of four webinars and a digital conference are planned with the Slow Food network around the world (Terra Madre delegates, Slow Food communities and convivia, producers participating in the event’s marketplace, etc.), with the aim of illustrating the objectives and potential of the FAO’s GIAHS Programme for the sustainable development of rural areas.

The principles on which the Programme is based are explained, starting with the importance of cultural conservation, biocultural diversity and traditional production systems for the preservation of the environment and landscapes. These represent a viable alternative to the intensification of agriculture. The webinar will also explain the process for applying to be part of the GIAHS Programme.

Speakers TBC

The training session is conducted in English and French.

Project implemented by DAGRI in collaboration with PIN and Slow Food, with funding from AICS and the collaboration of Horizons.

Trees -- such as those of the Faidherbia genus -- are planted in fields or pastures as natural fertilizer. Intercropping with trees on farmland has now become popular. In Zambiamore than 160,000 farmers plant Faidherbia trees in their fields. Farmers in Niger have been able to make 4.8 million hectares of land greener and more fertile, thanks to these EverGreen Agriculture.

The Sahel, home to over 100M people, marks the frontier where human habitation and agriculture meets the Sahara desert. Farmers here have been managing crops and livestock with scattered trees for generations creating the vast agroforestry parklands that dominates the landscapes. Indegineous trees here are essential to locals as they provide food,medicine, timber and climate regulation. For decades this area has had high climate change, desertification and worsening food insecurity. Recently widespread regreening has happened because farmers have encouraged the regeneration of young trees that grow naturally in their fields, a practice known as farmer managed natural regeneration heralded as the corner stone of modern climate smart agriculture.

Made by leading Ugandan documentarist Nathan Ochole, this film explains what agroforestry is and the myriad of contributions that it has made to Uganda. It starts in the highlands of Kabale, where trees on farms prevented landslides and floods, provided fruit to villagers and made their agriculture more sustainable. It then roams to the parklands of northern Uganda where Borassus palms and Shea trees provide valuable nutrition and cash earnings (particularly for women in the case of Shea) and improve the yields of the crops grown near them. It visits Kapchorwa where we see the use of the nitrogen-fixing shrub Calliandra as feed for dairy cows and then documents the improvements that orange trees have made to livelihoods in Namatumba.

Along the way, the film interviews farmers as well as Dr Clement Okia, the representative of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Uganda, and Dr Hilary Agaba, Programme Leader Agroforestry at Uganda’s National Forestry Resources Research Institute (NaFORRI NARO). It was produced by Cathy Watson, formerly of Tree Talk and Muvle Trust in Uganda and now Head of Programme Development at ICRAF, and by Australian AVID volunteer, Laura Keenan.